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emergency road trip
by Gabriel RicardThis is going to be a good day
to win a year’s supply of boxed wine
and band-aids from the two a.m. poker game
at the local ten-story pharmacy.
You can see the heart of an electric
bloodbath for miles in that neon sign.
He finds a strange view from a weird building
in a bad part of town, struggles with the more
impulsive memories that stand to leave behind the most damage
and spends as much time alone as possible.
It’s not the easiest thing in the world anymore. Death
doesn’t slow down old friends or tourists
who know all the stories before their flight even lands.
They’re still looking for action.
He almost never meets someone with enough sense
to be on their way when the sun is two hours late to throw
a spotlight over the thumbtacks that have taken their dramatic license
cue from breadcrumbs.
Al l the boys live like zombies who crack a smile
every time someone cracks their head on the sidewalk
after drinking their weight in cough syrup and trying to learn
how to dance from one rooftop to the next.
Those musical spectaculars from the old talking picture days
are gonna have a lot to answer for someday.
The girls wear southern belle summer dresses in February
and pray with their eyes wide open and a necklace made
from the a string of the smallest beating hearts on record.
Some of them fall in love fifteen seconds too late
and spend the rest of their lives making everybody
suffer like hell for it.
He sits in the back of every bus he rides
and misses those days when he wouldn’t have traded
even one of them for anything. They were vicious and could put
any veteran vampire to shame. On the other hand some of them
had beautiful singing voices.
But really
they were a bit long in the tooth to be acting
like lost youngsters with more insight than common sense.
He can’t take much more of them.
Tonight he’s gonna play that poker game
and hopefully go from there to one of those Bingo get-togethers
with the stakes going for as much as love, death, taxes and millions
upon millions of potentially real dollars.
Tonight he’s gonna to put that insomnia to work
and wallpaper the museum background with travel brochures.
01/05/2011 Posted on 01/05/2011
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Joan Serratelli on 01/05/11 at 06:08 PM Where do you come up with this magic? Loved the story. SO well told. Facinating to say the least. |
| Posted by V. Blake on 01/06/11 at 06:46 PM I never have anything to say when I comment on your poems. I just feel like they all turn into the most inane, dime-a-dozen compliments. But, at the risk of sounding insincere(Which I am very, very much not), this is spectacular. |
| Posted by Johnny Crimson on 01/07/11 at 03:02 AM on the other hand some of them had beautiful...... (I like it all, but your wit keeps the pace alive in everything you do. Great job. |
| Posted by Tony Whitaker on 01/07/11 at 08:41 PM I've changed my mind. The more I read your works the more I see Cormac McCarthy. Words tossed between poetry and prose to propel the reader to a final resting place where your storied platitudes rest upon pictures at an exhibition. Another ray of brilliance, Gabe! |
| Posted by Morgan D Hafele on 01/10/11 at 01:01 PM what a read! like always man, you take me on a trip |
| Posted by Stephan Anstey on 01/10/11 at 03:05 PM "It’s not the easiest thing in the world anymore. Death" is a brilliant line break. I don't like the two uses of 'crack' in the 6th stanza, though I like both lines individually. I have mixed feelings on the 'gonna' in the penultimate stanza - it's smooth enough, but it doesn't seem to fit the voice of the rest to me, particularly as you use 'going to' in the next stanza. The closing couplet is slammin'. |
| Posted by Timothy Wilson on 01/10/11 at 07:27 PM This one's a trip. (pun intended) I would be afraid to go inside a brilliant mind like yours. cool poem Gabe. |
| Posted by Rob Littler on 06/25/13 at 05:35 AM Gonna crack some crack! |
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