Might have been an all-night diner.
Might have been a permanent, awful
vacation spot for women
who thought Paul Newman was a real gentleman
for about an hour and a half.

I don’t ask big questions.
I don’t smile until I’ve had strong coffee,
and made certain none of my fingers are broken.

And I sure as hell don’t try
to have religious arguments
with the man in the moon.

He’s already got bad skin and an eye-patch.

It’s true. I saw it in a movie once.
Though I will say I had been up for two days
at that point,
and I was falling in love for the fifth time that week.

And it was finally paying off, too,
but that’s a story I’ve already told
over the kind of heavy metal
that cracks the windows of all the nearby cars.

I almost broke my ribs to that kind of music,
and I’ve told people about that.

What can I say? What can I show you?
Is it time to learn another language?
Maybe find a belly-dancer
with an obsession for hypnosis and repressed memories?

Someone told me to stop smoking,
and stop drinking warm beer at ten a.m.

They’ve known me for fifteen years,
but that’s hardly an excuse to talk to me like that,
or miss the point entirely.

Is it my fault I can’t tell the difference
between a play party in Virginia Beach,
and a prayer circle in Athens?

Is it my fault for proposing to a weeping, damaged
con artist from the Carolinas in a Red Roof Inn?

What should I do when it’s four o’clock in the morning,
there’s geese tearing ass all through the kitchen,
and the only way out,
the only way I’m going to get just a little further
on down the road,
is to take a ride with a professional inventor
who shaves one side of his head,
and keeps laughing at one private joke after another.

That’s what we-in-the-know call a rhetorical question.

You ask a lot of those when you’re a bit too familiar
with your surroundings,
and I wish,
goddamn,
do I wish I could ask those questions,
and not know the answer.

04/18/2012

Posted on 04/19/2012
Copyright © 2025 Gabriel Ricard