Poem of the Day 01.12.09

old cigar and memories

i see an old cigar
on the pavement
and i think of you
and don’t know why

did we ever smoke
a cigar together?

anyway
i don’t think that’s the point.

but i was on your wife’s
facebook page again
trying to figure out which
one of her friends
is the one she is fucking
and leaving you and your
kids for.

call it detective work
if you want
but i’m just curious.

after all
i’ve known you since i was
nine years-old
and have been privy to a bunch
of your dreams
from baseball stardom
to having your own soul band
or basketball team.

it wasn’t supposed to work
out like this, was it?

you sitting in the home
you can’t afford
your parents dead and gone
nowhere to go
going to a job you can’t stand
and coming home to the wife putting
the kids to bed,
knowing over the lukewarm dinner
that someone else
is putting it to her on the weekend
and as soon as she can afford it
she’ll be gone.

i heard you even talked to him on
the phone last week.

no, man
it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
i think that too
when i wake up on another morning
where i’ve had too much the night before
or when i think i’m having a heart attack
in the bathroom at the job.
or when i feel like i’m drowning again.

it just wasn’t supposed
to work out this way.

but it has.

and somehow in this shit
we are expected to be men
and to bear the brunt of everything
that comes our way
like blissful and ignorant fools before
the stink and blood
of the slaughterhouse.

so be it.

if we must
we must be dumb for now
if for nothing else than to preserve
the shreds that are left
for the many years that remain
for art and the hope of love and hate
and for your children.

my dear friend
i see an old cigar
on the pavement
and i think of you
and i hope you’re doing
all right tonight.