poem of the day 01.07.11

good olds ones

my grandmother
used to sit at her kitchen table
lighting one smoke from the last smoke

drinking beer before noon

a shaker of salt at her side
to liven up the bottle

and the government cheese

calendars from the last two decades
spread all over the fake marble

free calendars from banks

calendars that were yellow
and had lottery numbers
scrawled on every date possible

they were her tarot cards

her get-rich-quick scheme

her look into the past
to get a grasp on the future

while my grandfather sat outside
drinking cans of beer
that he’d stolen from the brewery

listening to the radio

watching the black and gypsy kids
beat each other up in the street

waiting for the bookie to drop by
so that he could place
bets on the college and pro games
the next weekend

my grandparents

like all of those tough old son-of-a-bitches
who fought the last great war

who propped the country up
before we tore it all back down

and turned it into the third world

those rough mothers
with their whiskey voices
and sinatra songs

christ, how i miss them sometimes

especially sitting here on an evening bus
coming home from a dead job

all day in front of a dead machine

trying to close my eyes
and forget that america exists

as fat slabs of twenty-first century
flesh and blood

play video games on pocket phones

talk boundless irrelevance

and have the audacity
to consider themselves human beings
from an enlightened age.