In Your Old Apartment

(for Patty...)

Sing Along!

In your old apartment
burning insense would meet
rising piss from the street
As guests would dance and melt into
your niece's finger paintings on the walls

In your old apartment
The pasta making set
was always bathed in kitchen sweat
With ever changing roommates and
neighbors passing as revolving doors

You started your Fridays with
A few sips of chianti
And some leaves left inside
a pipe that were
dumped into some brownies

Soul on the stereo
As the whole world would come in
Watching walls bend and fold
Into laughter's growing din

In your old apartment
Morning light'd shine with flair
on dirty dishes everywhere
And the lace curtains that hid your bedroom window
tussled wildly in the breeze

In your old apartment
We would climb to the rooftop
On a cold afternoon
And tell ourselves what lucky bastards
we were to be living in this town

for even tho'…
You could be mugged at any time
Some gutter
could be a river of Thunderbird wine
And the children
Were too scared of their own minds

There was no better place on earth
for lives to intertwine
And this broken building off dirty 6th Street
Was sitting on a goldmine

Why else would anyone come to
This fog infested sunshine

In your new apartment
I can hear voices beseech
from the ends of Venice Beach
When the fireworks and food would be
on display from your hands once again

In your new apartment
all the years in Tuscany
Are just a recent memory
Save for photos
passing through our hands
covered with chubby Italian smiles

Yeah, It's a shame the things
You are told to do
As you await your lover's
papers to come through
In the meantime there's a night to make
And friends to take in hand
For tho' half the people here don't know you
There's another goldmine to be had...