Sam Cooke, You Ain't Gone

The breeze through the bar pulls forth the open sigh of the sign of light,

the lightning yellow sign with it’s jazz hum, it’s oohs and aahs - it’s baseline

rife with cymbals screaming and a seamstress is teeming over a bottle or two

with a woman or few that’s had a liquor too few - she’s still here. Her breath close

to the window steers the direction of the condensation, the reflection of her lipstick

convulses and heaves. Apparent in the idols at the end of the room who talk of suits

in suits with those who knew old money before it was cool. The very stash of inheritance

comes from you, and you, and you. I can hear their heartbeat from the other side of the room.

In view comes a sailor and his wife, a smaller lady of the same size of the longest snooker queue

so maybe around 5ft 2. I cannot tell. Her smell like the perfume of Chanel No. 5, she sighs -

the wine like the bottom of her glass tastes like empty exhalation and shattered dreams.

The bartender beams at me, but I don’t see past the pasted grin, to me it seems you’re trying

too hard to love a place you’re in - just look. I click at the music box playing Sam Cooke, the only

good thing about this hole you’re in. The Bible is just a book. All through the aisles make room

for the glue sniffers on the first floor, the sober ones and the whores who move like the wind

through the queues of stiff-necks and the law firm talking to the cops. Heart stopping and mail

dropping working class men hopping from bar to bar. They stop here to talk, buy nothing. Leave.

The air lifts and we are reprieved, there’s a scent of sweet potatoes and the bar tries so hard

to salt peanuts up the benches of the classy messes sitting just across the way from me, but

there’s no connection - they stare at me. I stare back. A satire written in ink so black it would

wire up Jesus’s heart to a harpsichord and blast it out the music box, - there’s Sam Cooke and

look, he’s back. Somebody have mercy, and tell me what is wrong with me. Sam, there’s nothing

wrong with you, don’t you get it - you’re a systematic man on the wrong end of the- shit, now

he’s dead. It’s been years since 1963, when Sam Cooke was shot dead in a seedy motel, with

a girl like hell - fire a gun to his heart - lady you shot me. And what do we do now. Do we open

coffin funeral? How about you go your way, I’ll go Tupelo. Mississippi jazz, the blues of Elvis

or the mad hatter cans of Rockabilly. Built from stadiums and insulted by Frank Sinatra. Does

he still have a cold? Tennessee whisky stinks the bar. Colours it yellow and pulls Sam Cooke

from the record shelf and swings on another song. What’s wrong now? My friend smiles at me.

I tell him about Sam Cooke, and how he was shot dead in 1963.