Red Light District, Amsterdam—for Chet Baker, et al.

A black house with a low-railed balcony
made for the foggy night, the kind of blue,
for melancholy—not the main event on this tour, 
that’s the windows, the peep shows
where the working girls dance if you drop
your euros in the slot. Still, there’s the plaque
by the black door to the black house, another
tall, skinny pile settling, foundation cracking, 
nothing on the level on this flat, boggy ground,
just another tall, skinny house where a tall, skinny man
with sharp cheekbones and a busted mouth
tried tried tried to keep making the notes
to keep singing sweet from a broken throat. 

We’re all in carnival mood here, kids on gap years,
thrill-seekers testing their nerve, willing themselves
To approach the girls, dumping down shots for courage.
Don’t worry, Max the guide says, it’s all cleaned up now,
worst thing you could find around here is fake hash.

He’s Irish, but he’s lived here for years, so wouldn’t 
he know? Though Max the guide talks game about cleanup
you can still see them, huddles of old rags and black feet
ingrained with dirt and grease. They called this bit Heroin Street
because it was such a problem then—you’d see the folk 
fallen out everywhere you looked, needles underfoot.
So—have you heard of this guy, then? Jazz musician?
Addicted to heroin. Like a kid in a candy store here, then.
Did he jump? Was he pushed? Or was it just an accident?
Either way, he went over the balcony rail of that top floor,
they found him dead right by the front door. Now let’s cross over. 

We’re in carnival mood here, all reggae, all reefer vape,
but remember, we have to remember—that tall, skinny man
had a name, he was Chet Baker, trumpet player, he sang
My Funny Valentine high and sweet, like anyone, like all of us,
more than just his stupidest choice. We remember him, we
remember them all, here in the shadow of the tall black house,
the ones like us who’ve made it across the old Heroin Street
and the ones, all the ones, so many of the ones, who didn’t.
                        

It took a long time to get here, all the way
to the back of the storage unit. Reek of mothballs,
old cardboard, that thrift store smell of sweat
and grease absorbed by fabrics long stowed away.
Smell of precarity in this cell of old selves 
sat there gathering dust. Old ways of being and hurting.
Old technologies, some obsolete. Now, I know I can find
a turntable for my old LPs—those somehow came back in
when I wasn’t looking, when I thought they had gone extinct.
Just goes to show what nostalgia can do. But the others?
Where to find a cassette deck for the box of old tapes? 
Where a laser disc, a reel-to-reel, a slide projector, a VCR?
Trawling through my old things, I travel through time,
blowing dust off the past. As if I might plug in and coax out
not just some old dance tunes but old versions of you, and of me.
And I might. But hopefully never the one that squealed 
“oh I love you” when you pressed my buttons right. Like 
you would every so often when you remembered, when 
you got bored, when nothing else was on. Rewind, fast forward. 
Press play. I love you, I love you, I love you, I’d say.