I’m completely broke once more after two week’s without work. I suppose this depression about money will be my guiding light for the futre, but I can’t worry about the trivialities about which I can’t do anything. Somehow I have to find a job.

THE HUDSON DOCKS NOVEMBER 1978

November night

Derelict docks stretch along the Hudson
Empty berths for miles
Once home to
Clipper ships, ferries, upriver ships
The Halve Moon
Robert Fulton’s Clermont
The Cutty Stark
All
Gone into a forgotten history
No more ocean liners going to Europe.
Yet the Hudson flows back and forth
Twice a day

The piers home to rats, tramps and sex adventurers
I walk with Libby
A blonde model
All in black panther leather
Long legs, haughty hips, a breastless chest, an aquiline nose.
In the deep dark
She could be a he.

We enter a collapsing wharf.
Under the protection of darkness
Men huddle in silent orgies.
We deeper into the ruins
We stop in a room
Two shadows
A foot apart
Now.
My leather coat on the floor
Libby’s clothes on a battered crate.
She
Near-naked
Except for expensive lingerie.
My Levis drop down my legs.
The November wind baffles through the open bays
On the Hudson
The thump of powerful engines

Something big on the river
Very big
An ocean liner
Its diesel engines
Powering the ship
On the tide
Sea bound
Into the Atlantic

Libby pulls me down
Between her thighs
Her legs hooked around my knees
Her
Naked
Yearning
A cool hand guiding me
A thrust
A gasp
Two animals humping
Men watch gather to watch.
A warning glance
Retreat into the shadows
I groan the potential of life
Into Libby
The ships long gone
The ocean liner too.
Into the night.
Now
Done
Libby back in black leather
A dim silouhette
We leave.
Behind
The men in the shadows
By the Hudson
In the November night

PAINTING BY REGINALD MARSH