i met you one night and my whole life
changed, in a blink of an eye blind
i could not, just could not remain the same
impassive, disenchanted, disemboweled within
my soul in desperate need of
a worthwhile sin
awakening the ghost
of the woman i once was,
a specter of the soul that breathed
its final gasp, and for a brief
moment, i’m home
at last
the trumpeter rules with his jazz melodies
and my heart weeps with each note
it’s raw and needy and plucks at each heart
string pulled so tight it could almost break
and sever
our ties
but the trumpeter still rules in the darkness
of Club 101 and we sit
and laugh and drink beers like fish
listening to the blues
coming from
lonely hearts.
If you could split your time evenly between two places, and two places only, which would these be?
There is one other city I seem to talk about as much as New York City, and that’s wherever I happen to be. And at this point on my life, it’s Long Beach, California, a port city just south of Los Angeles. While New York City is buzzling crazy, no matter where you are, where I no longer fit in but doesn’t mean I love it any less, and hella hella expensive – even Brooklyn is the second most expensive Burroughs to live in now as Manhattanites are moving to Brooklyn in droves – there’s Long Beach. 
Long Beach is a city of contradictions, where you can be in a ritzy section one minute and walk two blocks up, and there are homeless people muttering in their coffee, the one that they got for free as a refill in their days-old reused cups. It’s a city that has retro row on one end of 4th street and a few blocks away you’ve got LGBT central, with the Silver Fox to the south of Redondo Avenue and Executive Suite to the north.
I really thought Executive Suite was just what it says, a building with suites in them till someone corrected me and said it’s a lesbian bar. That explained the people lining up to get in at night.
It’s taken me a long time to warm up to Long Beach, but as the years go by and I’m still here, walking along its boardwalk and patronizing from every small shop that strikes my fancy – especially bookstores like Apostrophe Books on Main Street and the understatedly hip Viente Y Agua Coffee House with its open mic nights and book filled-up pin-up board – it’s a city that’s been waiting for me all these years. 
And I’m glad it did.
I found this video today while looking for inspiration for a story I wrote last year (for a Daily Prompt that turned into a 3K word story), hoping to continue it with another one that would take me back to New York City with the character, Emmanuelle.
Because, yes, I miss the darn city and its people.
The pianist is Colin Huggins aka The Crazy Piano Guy (he’s not really crazy) who takes a piano out around NYC and plays.
Morrighan's Muse 