A.B. SPELLMAN - "BLUES: MY BABY'S GONE"

my baby's gone
& incredible distances close before me
my face pressed up -- side the wall
which doesn't open a window
into a room of dead flowers
dead tokens of the hours
i spent with my baby

my baby's gone is not like a song
like a rope i could swing on
wind on my shades blurring faces
in the park to streaks of color
in the dark while the singing
rests my chest from the hurt
that fills the hole in me
my baby left.
it's more a cry like an answer
a twist in the turning
a sobering of skids and
a panic of drugs

my tongue dries up & manhattan collapses.

{This poem appeared in 1966 in POEMS NOW, edited by Hettie Cohen for Kulchur Press.}