I’ve got three pennies to rub together,
so I’m going to throw two away,
and start all over again with just the one,
because it sounds good on paper.

That’s what we’re settling for
these days, okay? The white boys in Raleigh,
North Carolina are getting drunk
at twelve o’clock in the afternoon,
and acting out their college basketball fantasies
with a couple of frozen turkeys.

Far be it for me to judge.
I’ve been known to sweat blood,
by the time I walk across the room,
to tell her that her eyes could turn a poor young man’s heart
into orange construction paper.

I once paid for the damage I had created around me
with a cheque on what was left of the solitary bedroom wall.

The public library and I
have very different ideas
of what those reading tables are for.

You were a gal Friday of wild abandon.
I can’t believe anything bad
ever came out of all those parked cars
we borrowed to get away from the month of June
trying to get rich off the standard cruel winter
in New York City.

October was never up to any damn good either.
I can’t trust a month that sells me out,
every time someone I love moves to San Francisco,
and doesn’t want me any closer than Edgewater, Maryland.

You never really understood what I meant by that,
but you’re a saint double-crossing the music
that’s supposed to carry me home,
and no one will ever make me laugh like you do.

I’m hopeless.
Absolutely hopeless.

I owe you more fragile coffee cups
and counterfeit twenties
than I’ll ever be able to steal
from my cousins-by-marriage,
at one of our many,
unfortunate rescue shelter family reunions.

I’ve been weird, talkative and obnoxious
to a room full of empty funeral suits.

You’ve managed to live with that,
keep your wits above and beyond our attention
to the details of our unhealthy social graces,
and even care enough to tell me to watch out
for beautiful girls who travel by Greyhound.

You might even be able to accept me
when it gets to the point where nothing surprises you anymore.

I’ve been waiting on that kind of thing
for years, you know.

09/02/2011

Posted on 09/02/2011
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