Nat Sherman's

Nat Sherman's

Falling asleep, I still listened to the old man's lies,
who drank bourbon, slurring on about some refined gentlemen
living in brick stones, four stories
high on the upper east side.
He said, you see 'em down on 42nd, in Nat Sherman’s,
on the corner of 5th avenue, buying ciga's.

It’s a craft, smoking a ciga'.
Castin' out belly aches with smoke rings that lie,
keepin' the crowds from stormin' the doors at Sherman’s,
leavin' it to the goddamn so-called gentlemen.
They wear armani's, and camel haired coats, outside,
after a brandy in the smokin' room, and a short story

from the New Yorker. Downtown the boy's hear stories
of these guys usin' Grand Manier for dippin' cuban ciga's,
playing cards, all the while betting dividends on the side.
With Franklin antes and poka’ chips, these blue bloods lie,
about each other, like the one from the Garden City Men’s
Club. Hear 'bout that judge? Fell asleep with a Sherman

alive in his hand. Lit up the locka' room like Sherman
in Atlanta. With each glass of Makers Mark his story
grew, then thick with sweat, he acted like no gentleman
he spoke of. Their halls reek of rotted ciga's.
Termites and rats breathing from the walls, spread lies
that the sigma phi boys of years back, cast spells inside

the alumni club’s far wall, on the side
facin’ 66th. The downtown boy’s go to Nat Sherman’s
only to feel out of place, then they spread lies
that The rich, the rich ran Tamminy Hall and stories
of Castro, Castro drank cognac with ciga's
when he came back in ‘59, to visit his gentlemen.

These backer’s weren’t seen in Harlem. Gentlemen
never slummed with the boy’s from that side
of town. So alone they practice their art, smoking cigars
at noon, escaping Manhattan's dead weight in Nat Sherman’s
shop, leaving the rest of the city to tell their history.
Ya know, its true, these things I say, they ain't lies.

From across the bar, he stumbled over words of Sherman's.
Sliding off his bar stool, he left his stories
behind for me to repeat or forget. In a fog of his cigar
my eyes burned, as I drank another to his so-called lies.