poem of the day 01.11.13

thank you, mr. grabowski

oh, mr. grabowski

i read the news that you are leaving

after years of dedicated service as the building superintendent

and i truly don’t know what i’ll do without you

so thank you

thank you for the years of smoking cigarettes

outside my bedroom window at three in the morning

thank you for shouting into your cell phone

as i tried to sleep

thank you for waxing the hallways at 10 p.m.

on a sunday night

thank you for shrugging when you couldn’t shut off the heat

even though you turned it on when it was still hitting seventy outside

thank you for offering to fix our broken window two years ago

i’m sure that part you needed probably got lost in the mail

thank you for letting your grandkids scream

in the hallway all night

and for your teenage daughter and her whore friends

screaming outside my living room window

while the wife and i tried watching a godard film

thank you for letting her watch our cats

and almost dehydrating them in the process

thank you for never fixing the elevators

and for letting the garbage pile up so high

that the building got infested with cockroaches last summer

thank you for all of the mundane talks

when i was trying to get my mail

your enlightened views on race relations and the state of the nation

always gave me pause

thank you for spraying my windows when they were open

thank you for blowing leaves at six in the morning

after a night of horrible sleep

and for letting the snow on the walkway turn into ice

because staggering home drunk in the winter

was always an adventure

thank you installing my deadbolt at an angle

and thank you for leaving paint splatters on the floor

thank you for your idiot son

who liked to play football on the street at midnight

thank you for cleaning up all of the wine and whisky bottles

then gossiping about me outside while i read proust on the couch

and thank you for telling the other tenants

that my wife and i were the ones smoking pot

and then denying it

thank you

thank you, mr. grabowski for all that you’ve done

over the years

you’ll be sorely missed.