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four perilous blocks

by Gabriel Ricard

I don’t assume death is following me like a lovesick entertainer,
when I walk four perilous blocks to get coffee
and hit on the poor girl behind the counter. I trust that I’m going to pass
away one morning on a twenty-three-year-old’s couch.

We’re not going to swap names,
and we’re not going to talk about all the books we never read.
She’s just going to leave me
to smoke by an open window, and watch people wait for the rain to leave.

Give that art gallery of storm clouds a chance
to finally harass another city of bloodhounds, truck-drivers
and girls with amazing tattoos and collars for the bloodhounds.

I’m going to laugh at them. I already know that.
I’m going to call them a bunch of visitors in town for the fight.
I’ll be smug. Even when I wheeze away four years for five minutes.

Put it this way,
my forty-fifth birthday is not going to be a whole lot of fun,
but I’m sure I’ll still find the willpower to put on a tie,
and do something stupid at an office party full of unknowns.

Kindness of strangers. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
You get it. Whatever the hell your name is.
I won’t want to keep too many people close by,
and I won’t want to know a thing about my nieces and nephews.

When it comes time to avoid dangerous modes of transportation
stick to streets I know by the TV shows drifting out the window,
I’m going to tell the judge dressed as a fireman dressed as Frankenstein’s monster
that I’m innocent of almost everything I should have done differently.
I’ll tell him or her, I won’t be sure which, that I would have gone to see my family,
gone to see the chapter of The Society of Mad Hatter Fiancés,
but there was all this hair and corn syrup and shell casings on the road.

It was a mess out there, I’ll say,
and my line of credit in those casting couch motels
took a dive in the last round of the last time
I came into a little money.

He’ll laugh,
it’s an office party for morbid adults,
or she’ll laugh,
it’s an open bar for darlings and bastards,
and I’ll buy them a drink.

I’ll buy everyone a drink,
And I won’t bore a solitary soul with intimate details.

And that thing with the couch
will just kind of happen by accident.


09/20/2012

Posted on 09/21/2012
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard

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