pick lust instead by Gabriel RicardSomeone asks about me.
They want to know about my health.
If I’m still going to bed at dawn,
because I never know,
if she’s going to come back,
and drill through my heart with a hammer
by celebrating the first blizzard of the season
with a gorgeous summer dress.
They ask, if those weird birds still fly through my room,
and snub any doubts, that something like glass will stop them
from hitting the sea of tranquilly, and starting a new life for themselves.
Dancers out-drink me,
and sweet talk me into somehow joining them for lunch the next day.
I love them for it.
Drinkers leave me, doing a bad Ric Flair strut at the local zoo,
three a.m. mountain time.
I got no problem with them.
The bears dig it.
The monkeys dream of writing for “The Price is Right.”
Same person wants to know if I’m eating well.
They don’t think nails and Kraft Dinner is any way to live.
They hope I’m still trading everything I’m worth,
for material that disappears unless it’s written with tattoo ink,
on the back of whoever snuck into the shower behind me.
They pray that I’m happy enough,
and that I’m still traveling more than common sense demands.
I checked around. I lost fifteen pounds
and imagined the lives of old immigrants
in the photos along the walls of some stranger’s house
from walking around so much.
No one was clear on who said those things,
but they knew it was someone,
and they knew,
they had just left for Nagoya an hour ago.
Might have been Boston.
I guess I could have checked.
Hit the streets, pick a direction.
Run until my lungs rush into the twenty-second century.
Obviously,
I didn’t,
and it bothers me
even though my life
would be the same either way.
They might have had some loose change to spare.
I’ve been saving up lately
for something or the other.
10/26/2011 Posted on 10/26/2011 Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard
Member Comments on this Poem |
Posted by Meghan Helmich on 10/26/11 at 05:02 PM You had me grinning at the Ric Flair strut. I do believe you've stumbled upon a whole new world of language here. Oh so wonderful! |
Posted by Laurie Blum on 10/26/11 at 07:15 PM Well... the great title lured me in and I'm glad it did! You can make a piece of prose so hysterically funny and yet sadly real at the same time. Kudos to you Gabe! |
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