She was like that woman.
The one who might have died
wrapped in a good blanket
on a labyrinth ocean liner,
while at sea.

The one who actually died
in a sanatorium, for people
whose sons and daughters loved them enough
to hope they struck it rich
six months or less after the funeral.

She littered the Laundromats, Indian diners
and video arcades (remember those?!) with men.
The inner and physical beauties.
One and all realizing ten minutes too late
that they were no better than roses
with souls that didn’t travel enough to learn
that you can’t still be wearing next-to-nothing
when the leaves begin to change their singular story.

A couple of those guys really went to town
on the kind of bad behavior that most people
aren’t even comfortable joking about years later.

They were four decades apart in age,
and the older gentleman was a great gentleman
in the sense that he hadn’t killed anyone
in the streets since 1970.

Extremely political is the best way
to describe the young man. He lived enough for three people.
All he had to do was whisper sweet sunrise stories
in the ears of aging conservative men.

Some life. He hated ringtones,
and talked about his weekends so much
that no one wanted to city with him on the 7A bus.

The only one to run by her place,
and that was only because he gave the driver
a bucket of local fried chicken.

Check out the folk song,
it has a nice rap portion in the middle,
about the night all three of them met.

Hope you can juggle fifteen stories at once,
and almost twice as many characters amongst them.

You might just forget
the three of them even exist.

Three completely different narratives
explain this phenomenon.
It wouldn’t be your fault.

You’re just like everyone else.
You probably believe one in a million
really do get to take the long nap
on one of those ocean liners.

This narrative is just cliff’s notes.

It’s not going to tell you
how they found each other.
Who called who against their better judgment.
How they all lived together for a little while.

It’s not even going to draw a line
at the exact point where not a single philosopher
in this world or the next could tell you
where the sex ended, and the violence began.

Find that stuff on your own.
Even if it’s a story you’ve heard before,
you stand to meet a lot of peculiar, passionate characters.

You can never get enough of that.
She couldn’t.

Mighty,
mighty
peculiar
how she’s
the only one
still making those rounds.

03/09/2012

Posted on 03/09/2012
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