poem of the day 12.19.14

birth of the cool

i remember

smoking cigars

in my parent’s small dining room

my portable CD player

placed right on the corner of the table

as you remember it

there was ice tea and nary an ounce of liquor

we were such rebels back then, huh?

but there was you and there was i

there was miles davis on a cool spring night

or was it the winter?

as much as i keep locked in my head

is as much as i’m starting to forget

whose CD was it?

or did it belong to the library?

these kinds of questions are coming to me

as i sit here tonight

getting drunk on vodka alone

listening to the birth of the cool

brooklyn screaming car horns and dogs

and assholes on their cell phones

parked in front of my open window

complaining about the other assholes in their lives

i can’t remember if it was my first time

listening to the album or yours

or was it the first time for both of us?

oh, i don’t know

i’ve had too much to drink

and i’m probably going to make

this a miserable night

for ally when she gets home

i tend to do that these days when i get going

about any small instance from the past

mixing alcohol and memories

into a fine molotov cocktail

i always hurl right into the present

what where we even doing at my parents?

smoking cigars and drinking ice tea

until my mother bitched down at us from the upstairs

home after some old high school friend’s

shitty metal show?

or at the movies with women

who’d try to ruin us with their love?

i don’t know

what does it matter now?

sitting here in this lonely room

the ice from my drink

burning my rotten tooth and freezing my throat

we had miles then

and i have him with me tonight

making finger shadows

in the headlights of some prick’s SUV

all this time regained

and all of this nostalgia

be damned unto a soused infinity

with all of the other moments of youth

disguised so badly as immortality