two poems

by Steve Passey

Mata Hari

your kisses taste good like man’s last cigarette could only a fool would waste it I just want to taste it one more time - one - and once more again I can’t lie I feel like I won’t mind dying but your kisses taste good good good like that last cigarette would so I keep my head down and I work harder than most and I’ve seen better than me beaten pillar to post and if there’s anything in this life that I found to be true it’s that your kisses taste good like a man’s last cigarette should

Stacey on the Strip

 My occasionally completely bonkers ex-girlfriend and muse Stacey grew up in North Hollywood, then moved to La Cañada Flintridge where, on the way to and from high school, she and her friends walked past Rick Springfield’s house every day. We all loved him, she said, but we never, ever saw him.

Rick, man, you don’t know what you missed.

A few years later she and some friends went to a club on Sunset Strip to see Patti Smith perform. They were all young and good-looking even by Southern California standards, where there are a lot of good-looking people, and they had a table right by the stage and goddamn if Eddie Van Halen didn’t come on stage and play three songs with Patti.

I could have reached out and touched him, she told me, and that he was not very tall. 

Had I been there Stacey, I said, I would have reached out and touched him. Hell, yes, I would have. I wouldn’t have groped him, it’s not like that, but to touch the right arm of guitar genius, fuck yeah, I would have reached out. In some alternate universe, I am there, and I reach out to Eddie and put him on my shoulders and he plays like he’s Eddie Van Halen and I’m into it, she’s into it, and everyone is into it and Rick, man, you don’t know what you missed.

Photo of Steve Passey

BIO: Steve Passey is from Southern Alberta. He is the author of multiple short story collections, one poetry collection, one sci-fi/horror novella, and is the host of "Just Sayin' on CKXU - interviews with writers about music. Find him ‪@superheavy.bsky.social‬