Favourites change a lot, but a stern contender based on its well worn pages in my library is my man Joe Bolton.
Tremendous talent.
His collection, Days of Summer Gone, is a must have if you can find it for a reasonable price. I once dropped it behind the radiator next to my toilet and actually took the radiator out to retrieve it, it's that damned good.
Here's a good'n:
The Light We Dance Through
This is the afterlife. Her gin-
tinged breath came like a cool
injection in my ear.
We were dancing after midnight in this place
called 32nd Avenue, dancing
over cigarette butts & against
bodies not our own & through a light
of such blue density
it almost wasn’t light at all.
But outside, there were stars,
& though all around us the city was playing games
with its deranged souls,
we danced three times around the parking lot–
a waltz, for chrissake, a fudgeing
waltz. That
was 1981, & each year
there are fewer & fewer people I’ll admit
as my acquaintances,
& fewer still I’ll dance with,
& it’s probably the case
that, on those all-too-rare occasions,
the light we dance through is the closest
we’ll ever come to any sort of afterlife.
