Safety in numbers
is basically how the reverend put it.
I wouldn’t be surprised,
if those three idiots stayed married for fifty years.
bought a nice farm in the Alberta badlands
and raised a son who would go on to bring
the novel back to prominence.

Cynicism is a theme song
that even I can remember in less than ten tries.
I still try to find people though.
I talk history to guy driving up front,
but he’s spent most of his career speaking
in a patient, tired voice to my six hundred thousand inadequate brothers.

All he wants me to do is show him my friend’s place,
it’s an old hanging house between two summer homes,
pay the fare and make ten thousand dollars before I’m thirty.

You know it’s bad when even strangers are giving you a hard time,
but I guess we might have been close at some point
that I’ve forgotten.
Out of respect for the memory of the good person I used to be.

I visit the friend. She doesn’t want me around anymore.
I hit that wedding. The bride thinks four is a whole lot of fun.

Her two husbands run me out of town,
they know a waste of theatrical potential when they see one,
but the rail thankfully breaks down in a friendly place,
and I think that I may finally get the right papers in the order.

I might finally find some work that allows me
the honor of picking up a tab once in a while.

I’m a journeyman smart-alack. It hasn’t gotten me anywhere.

I find myself in a small town. The marching band
and the police force are one. The mayor has a mean streak,
and he holds a grudge the way unwanted wanderlust holds a voice.
He remembers some comment I made to a cousin of his in 2007,
and he throws me in jail

I’m there for a few weeks. Someone drew windows with chalk
all over the damn place.
I think a great deal about a great deal of things.
I promise myself that I’ll get in shape,
quit smoking, quit drinking and give up women who want to take
a whole bunch of people with them.

It’d be great to have people say nice things about me.
After I catch the train that only lets you on
if you can drop in from out of the sky.

They might already do that.
Anxiety is less-costly than beautiful ink in New Orleans.

Maybe not great,
but a fascinating change to the tour-de-force.

I get out of jail,
leave that distressed town behind
and move in with a lesbian couple.

They blame me for things I didn’t even do,
and that charms me.

It’s a wonderful way of avoiding real issues,
full-length mirrors and pals who get a weird feeling
that I’m going to call them in a few hours.

12/07/2011

Posted on 12/07/2011
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