return to One Lucky

photography by Kunio Miyazawa, master-san of One Lucky

red-eye me losing my dignity (photo by Kunio Miyazawa)

As I wrote in a post last month, for a period early in my adult life, I spent my evenings at a bar in Tokyo called One Lucky. I wouldn’t expect anyone to believe me if I said the condition you see me in above was not representative.

one lucky, tokyo, 1985

in this city   this bar
at any mid-night   dinner hour
I’ll always have 
the shelves   the rows of
photo albums on the wall
one lucky archive
of days   years 
where the master-san 
kunio   his camera
greet generations 
of regulars   and I 
of oceans   decades gone
return once more 
to crack pages   time
to nam-vet bj
hotel-no-tell barry
pakistani bobby and 
she of haight-ashbury lore 
whom I wedged   loosed 
free of this town

while another 
across the pacific 
held fast the flowers
in her hair 
her free-love-ache
to leave me 
   bleary 
         sliding beery 
                shirt to navel 
                                  to the 
floor

now once more
to the master-san I say 
           what’s love
(you played it for her)
           got to do with it
(play it for me)
that secondhand emotion 
scrawled long ago
on a Suntory Old bottle keep 
which today’s 
                  regulars 
                             know 
                                     well 
you can’t