Russell Streur

NIGHTHAWKS AT THE DINER (THE ARGUMENT OF LOVE)


She is sitting next to him.

He is sitting next to her.

They are sitting there together in a disconnected diner left unnamed and they are sitting there together on the corner of a couple streets in Greenwich Village 1942.

He has one more Lucky Strike to smoke and she has one more dollar bill to spend and they are sitting there together with nothing left to say and no place else to go.

She is dressed in red and he is dressed in blue.

They are sitting there forever with Europe burst in flame and armies marching east and no one but themselves to blame for getting swallowed by the beast and they are sitting there forever while Jimmy wipes the counter top and florescent minutes tick toward closing time.

They are sitting there together with their alibis intact but the reasons for their lies forgotten, they are sitting there together but neither one remembers the things that drew them close, everything they had in common dried up bit by bit and peeled tore and chipped until an unforgiving wind kicked up one day and blew each piece away, they are sitting there together with no way in and no way out, whatever set them free somehow came a prison:

I demand a new deal
I demand a different deck
I demand another hand

I demand a different tune
I demand a new pitch
I demand another key

I demand a different number
I demand an alternate solution
I demand a recount

I demand another chapter
I demand a free verse
I demand a blank page

I demand a different testament
I demand a new asphyxiation

Baby meet me later on
Meet me at that place we know
I’ll have the engine running
Don’t forget to bring your gun.


BABYLON


The king is dead,
Ten thousand years in seven hells his soul to spend
The prophet cries


The gods have fled
This jackal’s dance and poisoned feast at last to end
And other lies.


But this the sooth
The bed we lie upon
By Ishtar’s tooth
Tonight in Babylon:


We plant the vine beneath the purple star
Drink Arbela wine from silver cups of Balthazar
Till seven planets rise.


No arrows Persian bows will loose
No shadowed doom to enter here or tongue confuse
When dawn the darkness blinds.


No towers
And no temples fall,
No hand but our’s
Is writing on the wall.



PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN FADING LIGHT


She’s a real fox
Shivers and knives
Blades of glass and ice
At midnight by the docks


She’s good in bed
An untamed shrew
Walking 42nd Avenue
Another woman in red


Who picked the apple from the tree
And traded Eden for a kiss
As Adam claimed


And God agreed
But whispers from the serpent hiss
Eve was framed.


BIO
Russell Streur is a resident of Atlanta, Georgia. His works have appeared in 50 to 1, 63 Channels, The American Dissident, Black-Listed Magazine, Camroc Press Review, Censored Poets, Half Drunk Muse, Juked, Lost Magazine, Megaera, Opium Poetry 2.0, Poets Democracy, Raving Dove, Sleep. Snort. Fuck., The Blanket: A Journal of Protest and Dissent (Ireland), Poems Niederngasse (Switzerland), and other publications.

He edits The Camel Saloon, a bar for dromedaries, malcontents and jewels of the world. Which one are you? http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/