Get to the old Broadway theater in time,
avoid the wiring that sticks out of every wall,
and don’t trip over the buckets. Set down to catch the rain
that’s so predictable with how it only comes during dress rehearsal.

Bats and shopping bags filled with old jewelry
inhabit those chandeliers that act like
they could still live large in the night sky.

See if you recognize her since that time
you wanted to knock over the last working phone booth
at the bus station. When even the cab drivers outside
looked up from these things called newspapers.

It was damn cold that day. The wind in the subway tunnel
would have knocked off the black Stetson
you’ve always wanted to own. Assuming you ever learn to play
the guitar, move to the kind of place that hangs nowhere by a thread
and stop taking yourself so seriously.

Watch her impress the entire theater,
Which will just be you,
and three hundred scratching posts
for mental patients with maturity problems.

Or stay the hell home,
stay the hell away
and get out of trouble for now.

It’s not like you know how to swim,
and it’s not like you’re known
for being courageous when the bullets
are flying out of dark corners.

You’re a pyromaniac
afraid of getting cancer from the smoke.

Just get going.
don’t even push those heavy doors open,
and wonder why crisp jolts of pain
are traveling along the hard-fought
highways that make up your arms.

Forget where you parked the car.
Walk until you find one that looks just like it.
Something tells the cats that make their living
people-watching that you’re going to Hell anyway.

You’re just too nice.
It’s a problem you won’t notice for years.

And it’s not that you’re going to finish last.
You might. It’s that you’ve been here
so many times before,
you could spray-paint your favorite memory
on the side of a five-story brick tombstone with a white roof.

Bet you didn’t know that.
She does. That’s why she’s been running
same lines since you were kids.

All kinds of lines, actually.

Confidence can be sensual, depressing
and hilarious.

02/13/2012

Posted on 02/13/2012
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