Elegy for James Darmody
from Boardwalk Empire

Atlantic City won’t sleep tonight, Jimmy. It heard the bullet ricochet in its gut.
You don’t know me but I am looking for you in the history books on my shelves
and in my sweat-slick fingerprints. You don’t know me
but tonight we have matching red veins in our eyes and I am looking for you
in the speakeasies and the basements of the synagogues. Jimmy,
your eyes still blue as gas flames. Modern blue. Machine blue.
Ocean filled with bourbon blue. Still shining shot glass mirrors.
The mud will not penetrate that gaze no matter where they weigh you down.
Ain’t America a dirty place, Jimmy? Isn’t it all just one huge trench we’re climbing over,
leaving our boot prints on one another’s cheeks?
Maybe you were right to leave but tonight the city by the sea won’t sleep.
Tonight the bear in your mad king father’s house will dance while your mother cradles her scream like a
sleeping infant; tonight the moose on the wall will moan; the falcon will beat the dust from its wings;
the leopard will unhinge its jaw and gash the waxed mahogany. Tonight
we are all out looking for you, dancing the razor edge of the American Dream. Did you ever miss and nick
your fingers, Jimmy? Are your hands used to cooling blood yet?
What will your murderers do with the knife in your boot? Whose fist will it fit now?
What will they do? Tonight I am sleepless, looking for you, looking to see if they’ll pour
any out on the floor for your memory in New York or Chicago--
Would they waste the hooch to toast you, Jimmy? Or would you not let them?
Will every blade in Philadelphia scrape together to say kaddish?
And the man that killed you, what will he do?
In the dark tonight he will hear the rain and, drink, and admit you were loved, Jimmy.
Tonight the fog over Jersey tastes of money, and cigarette smoke and your mouth.
Tonight every bottle you couldn’t push shatters on its own.
Tonight the bells at Princeton sing: To the lost! To the lost!
Tonight your brother’s false eye will crack open looking for its own tears.
Tonight I am out wandering America looking for you, Jimmy because Atlantic City won’t sleep until its
son comes home.
Tonight the city won’t sleep,
we won’t sleep,
I won’t sleep.
But I think you will.