Cocaine Pocky
On special treats and other minor violences
Sophie thought she was my boss—
her papa was.
A Chanel socialite,
she had one talent:
sabring Champagne, SHLONK!
She muttered putain all day,
accused me of hoarding dishes
and hiding the bathroom key.
Once she made me look for it
for two hours.
Once she told me,
I was skinny
because I hadn’t had a baby.
She convulsed when I left
a coffee ring on her cherry desk.
So I made her something special:
Cocaine Pocky
that doubled as firecrackers.
She blew herself up.
Dear S,
This poem hits like a switchblade made of sugar and spite ... humor, violence, class cruelty, and that old familiar self‑destructive edge I knew too well in the 80s. I’m not that man anymore, but a wild poem about cocaine and petty revenge still brushes an old bruise.
Each piece you write is a little grenade of class satire and feminine rage.
This one is a joke wrapped in a threat wrapped in a dessert.
It’s not really about drugs.
It’s about humiliation ... and the tiny rebellions people dream up when they’re treated like furniture.
I reacted the way I did because I’ve lived the other side of destruction.
Not the literary metaphor ... the real storm, forty years ago. I crawled out of a hole a lot of men never climbed out of.
So, when I read a poem that treats cocaine like a punchline, part of me laughs, part of me winces, part of me remembers the smell of that decade, and part of me wonders why it still tugs at my soul.
Memory is a jukebox with a busted selector ... you don’t always get to choose the song.
I enjoyed this one.
Thank you.
Steve
Wow! I think I met her once at a publishing office in North Hollywood. This is great, and the imagery is pure 80s. Love, Virg