poem of the day 10.06.14

jack and the giant jukebox

jack can’t get the jukebox to play

goddamned digital….he says

people are laughing at him

because they’ve been laughing at him for years

i just want to play a little grateful dead

he says it

it sounds like begging

we watch jack and the giant jukebox

that takes up half the wall in this place

it turns into a camera

white light is flashing throughout the bar

on the screen there are pictures of a frustrated jack

trying to put dollar bills in the machine

pictures of him squinting

pictures of him in a half-curse

jack’s jack daniels hat cocked sideways

his fat, red winedrunk face illuminated

it’s a status update, hashtag bonanza

jack says, if i wanted this kind of abuse

i could’ve gone home to drink

a few of us look at the glass of white wine

that he left behind for what seems like days now

then go back to singing summer wind

jack puts another dollar in the jukebox

it spits it back out

plays a song from its archives

as the telling pictures fade from the screen

and turn back into images of half-naked pop stars

puckering up for all of us saturday evening drunks

i don’t get it, jack says

i worked in computers for twenty-five years

but this….

my wife gets off of her stool to help him

last week in the liquor store

i paid for the rest of jack’s bottle of white

because he didn’t have enough change on him

when we see him on the street

we laugh and point and say, there goes good old jack

my wife gets the jukebox to work

a little grateful dead, jack says

sitting back down like a twenty-first century master

he takes a pull on his white

begins drumming on the bar

i can’t tell if it’s a jerry song or one sung by bob weir

but things are suddenly looking up

for us in here tonight

as the bartender sets two shot glasses in front of us

and says, the next round is on me.