Rp Verlaine, a retired English teacher living in NYC, has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He has several collections of poetry including Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers (2018) and Lies From The Autobiography 1-3 (2018-2020). Rp’s work has been featured in Punk Noir, Ygdrasil, and Runcible Spoon. 

Community Service

Lying in my bed as if certain
its hers or will be
prison cots ruined her back.

She questions
why I haven't asked her
real questions

Yet no reasons
exist to remake my world
not while she breathes.

Who can't resist
laughing when I say
she's beautiful as any
guillotine unstained
by innocence.

“You speak strange,”
she likes to say
in that way of hers with
every word between ellipses.

Until a younger man 
comes too close for
me not to see.

There is much to be
wary of when her smile
turns my way. 

A past hinting she'll
never far from needing
a bail bondsman, lawyer
or prescription pills.

Still I like the odds
call it my community service.
As the old man across street
stops watching FOX news
when my near naked 
angel does yoga 
on my lawn.

For Lou Reed 2

The bells, bells,bells
on your birthday
ring so hallow
with you not here to hear them.
Yet the dirty new York streets
survive as does your music
that made them seem
almost beautiful
from a distance
you never bothered
to navigate.
As I close my eyes
listen to the bells
remembering the fallen
the casualties and luckless
echoing from broken glass
needles, crack vials & crystal meth
held tightly by those
who will be its
encore.