Once Upon a Crime

Heroes who could name a dame’s perfume at first sniff

Gun molls whose stocking seams were always straight.

Cops were called flatfoots and all detectives were dicks.

Phones were in phonebooths or attached to a wall.

Have you ever owned a car with running boards?

*

Just once I would like to light up in a saloon again

with my own ashtray beside a tall Cuba Libre

in a joint with no TV on the wall behind the bar,

back when the homeless were called hobos and

kids roamed the streets till the streetlights came on.

*

Black and white memories—the past as textbook.

White and Black, like the keys on my old Royal

Upright that I could make sound like gun shots

on the page, if I hit the keys hard enough.