poem of the day 11.30.15

i was thinking about nashville

                        --for dan fante

i was thinking about nashville back in 2007

when i was looking for a word or two of wisdom in your emails

something that told me how to survive it

a little tip from the years of hard boozing and bad jobs

some tidbit from those novels and poems

that i sucked up like cheap wine

and you wrote atta boy, atta boy keep going

like blind faith would save and anoint us all

i was suffering in nashville in the grand opulent library

almost nine hundred miles from new york

traveling coast to coast on unsubsidized student loans

and the embers of a savings account

no job prospects no home a future on hold

over a decade out of college and my own sketchy resume

that made me look like a career drifter

but all you could ask me was if i had an editor

and, if so, could i give you his email

i was dying in the library trying to find a cheap hotel in memphis

writing shitty haikus next to budgetary woes

in notebooks that weren’t bound for glory

thinking about the honky tonks on broadway

full of blonde southern women shaking their asses

at men who weren’t concerned with poetic immortality

as i sucked down pabst blue ribbon at layla’s bluegrass inn

feeling less like a gin-pissing-raw-meat-dual-

carburetor-v8-son-of-a-bitch from pittsburgh

and more like a complete failure

with thousands of miles left to go

thinking that if you were still hustling for the word

how in the hell was i going to make it in the writing game?

i was thinking about nashville last night

half drunk on vodka when i heard about you being gone

another shooting star  another outlaw

no longer spitting raw juice on this scorched earth

guts and blood and brain turned into dust

i was thinking about nashville

how bright light builds only to fade away

oh, dan, i think that i was thinking about you.