poem of the day 12.19.09

watch it, you’re spilling

these oppressive types surround
my wife and i in an empty airport bar
they take seats right next to us
some blonde in whore make-up
her botox-heavy mother, her put-out father,
and a fat, aging frat boy who must be her husband
because he’s pushing along a pink baby carriage
and she keeps looking back to berate him

“lanny, what time is it?” she says.
and when lanny doesn’t know.
“oh, you’re no good for anything.”

she laughs and looks at the bartender
“yeah, i’m the one bringing a baby into a bar.”
and then she orders something fruity with “a lot of rum.”
as my wife and i sit there wondering how people
like her make it beyond the age of five
without swallowing a handful of marbles.

“lanny, fix your hair,” she tells her husband,
as he plays with his cell phone.
lanny has his hair overly gelled
and it has flecks of gray in it
probably from living with that bitch.
i tell my wife that i hope lanny has a piece of ass
on the side.

“he can never keep himself together,” she says
to her mother.
her mother is an older version of the blonde.
she can’t blink from the botox
can’t smile because of the collagen pumped into her lips
and both of the women have so much mascara on
it looks as though they’ve been popped
in the eyes a few times by their men.

“lanny, order a drink already,” she says.
lanny orders a scotch on the rocks.
“forget it, he’ll have a budweiser,” she tells the bartender.
before she leans over and coos to her ugly child
as i nurse my own scotch and try to look at her tits.

“lanny, i’m ordering you a sandwich to go with that beer,”
she says, even though lanny says that he’s not hungry.
“too bad.”
she looks at her mother and laughs.
mom nods her approval
as i look at the old man who’s been quietly sitting there
the whole time.
he’s nursing a bottle of amstel light,
watching the vikings beat the shit out of the bengals.

he looks like he’s been through hell with these two.
he has nothing to say to lanny as well.

“lanny, take your beer for christ’s sake,” she says,
then she tells her mother how fucked up she and lanny got
last night at the club.
“of course it wasn’t the good me, mom. sometimes the bad
me has to come out and play.”
mom nods her approval again.

then the baby starts crying and it wakes up
the old man from his lonely stupor
he downs his beer before leaning down to smile in the
child’s face.
lanny leans down too.

“watch it, you’re spilling,” she says
just as a stream of beer falls out of his pint glass
missing the baby carriage by inches
but getting the old man
on the sleeve of his new brown jacket.

“i told you, i told you,” she says to her mother,
lifting the fruity drink that has just arrived,
and looking at all of us,
“i just can’t take him anywhere.”