Half a Second God

a poem from my book Luck`s a Liar

There’s a tart on the plate,
raspberries bleeding red,
like the lipstick of a woman I loved once,
back in ’09,
before she left me for a guy
who sold tires in Saint-Denis.
I bite into it...
sweet, sharp,
like the sun hitting the Seine,
making you think God might be real
for half a second.
Tourists shuffle by,
laughter breaking like glass
on cobblestones.
I light a cigarette,
even though I quit last year.
Smoke curls up
toward that big metal bitch in the sky.
Paris doesn’t care.
The coffee’s cold,
the tart’s half-eaten,
and I’m scribbling this down
on a napkin stained with someone else’s wine.
Maybe I’ll die here,
or maybe I’ll just keep drinking
until the tower falls
or I do.
Either way,
this moment’s mine,
and Bukowski would probably laugh
and call me a sentimental bastard
for writing it down.