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Stilletto scars marked from knife fights
Over iron muscles mark his skin
With a razor slash (that took his left eye)
That stretches from his eyebrow down to his chin.
Pockmarks show the battlefields
And the warzone of his back
That used to be the bullet wounds
Straight through the gangster we called "Jack."
"Jack Frost," we called him in the day
(And by "day," of course I mean night.)
He said it was his cool head and colder heart
But we all knew it just sounded alright.
Jack carried switchblades
That you should shave with and spill the blood
Of a thousand different gangsters
But that was still never enough.
Blood thirsty and vicious
When he got this look in his eye
And flicked out his knives with a cool metal snick
And bared his teeth in a grimaced smile.
Now Jack was always an actor,
Flexing his muscles in an intimidating pose
And a steel look in his glassbead eye
In a terrifying show.
The snakes would bulge around his arms
Traced in yellow, black, and red
With the tattooed scales winding down his arms
Into a closed fist that was their head.
When Jack's fingers flew open
Into a fanged and gaping maw,
Cold poison seeped into the veins
Of the gangsters, running in fear and awe.
So whenever Jack walked into a fight,
All of us got behind him.
There was no chance in hell that we could ever lose.
He'd win the fight, no sweat, no trying.
Then one day he met his match
Against a Mexican high on coke
Who played Russian Roulette with tequila shots
And had a face like an angry joke.
The Mexican (whose name was "Pedro" or something)
Stood as tall as Jack Frost's nipples.
He was the skinniest esse North of the border,
Showing skin and bones where Jack's muscles rippled.
But god! he was quick with a broken bottle,
Shards of glass sticking from his hands
And the bottleneck jutting out sharp and strong
And slicked with blood over a Mexican tan.
So when Jack and Pedro started brawling,
The streets went quiet as a chapel,
The cars and brawlers shutting up for once
To watch the two fighters grapple.
Back and forth and in and out!
It looked like Jack and Pedro dancing
In a deadly way in a deathly ballroom
With the only sound as their sweaty panting.
An hour passed, and then another,
Before the night's first blood was spilled.
Jack slashed a line through Pedro's face
And then he went in for the kill.
Underhand and through the ribs,
The switchblades caught the 'spic,
But no - he grabbed Jack's hands and held them there
As blood oozed past, salty and thick.
His lungs hissing with escaping air,
His eyes bloodshot with futy,
He bared his teeth and burrowed in
Jack's throat, splashing blood and glory.
Thrashing nutcase from side to side,
Pedro ripped Jack's neck to shreds
And when Jack finally collapsed in his arms,
The two of them fell dead.
Suddenly, the night took life
And sirens split the air,
So we ran away from the policemen fury
And left Jack Frost lying there.
An ambulance drove him away
As we watched it from an alley,
And even though he six feet under,
Jack Frost lives forever in our memory.
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