day EIGHTY

forty three

my mother

is on the phone

asking me if i need new shoes

i can send you a gift card for new shoes

i tell her i don’t need the money

i’m just cheap and lazy, mom

she says

but i gotta send you something

like it’s a moral imperative

because she’s the one who helped throw me into this life

i tell her send it to planned parenthood

send it to the goddamned ACLU

my wife

wants to know what i want to do that day

maybe the movies

maybe a museum

maybe jumping off the brooklyn bridge

as if turning forty three is something to look forward to

maybe it is…if you’re hitting sixty

but i don’t know

from a young age

i knew i’d missed out on some essential zest for life

something that kept me separate

from the boisterous, loquacious rush of my peers

all i ever needed was a tv and an empty room

and now i don’t even have that petty youth to squander

i don’t want to sound like an ingrate

i’d just as soon forget my 15, 695 day on the planet and move on

get a little drunk and have that be that

to be honest i don’t have a clue

what i want to do with the day…or the next twenty years

should i even make it that far

it gets sort of depressing

all this hanging around and taking up unnecessary space

filling up the moments

with good books and other small joys

watching societies rise and fall

listening to the same blather by weak-jawed strong men

while sucking down the same food and the same booze

spinning the same mouse wheel

thinking tomorrow could be a triumph

if it’s only somewhat different than today

wondering when the true freedom is going to come

it’s not right to think like that

it’s almost un-american

with all of the disease and suffering

with all of the people dying in endless wars

a few DNA strands gone another way

and i could be dead in a ditch in mosul

or a sex slave to the boko haram

and what is true freedom?

today i feel like a selfish american

a petulant yankee child who wants to curl into a ball on the floor

and kick and kick and kick at the wall

until he gets what he wants

having no clue what he wants

i didn’t build this world, i want to shout

but i can feel my complicity in its malaise

with every breath

with every sour ride home from work on the evening bus

maybe one day it’ll feel different

like when i’m sixty years old

sitting on the couch with a good stiff drink

looking back on life like i’d fought a good battle

or thinking i hope i don’t have to keep doing this at eighty

reading a poem by some forty three year old asshole

who thinks his whole fragile world is at low ebb

all because he’s having

a shit morning

turning into a pissy day
...provided we don't destroy the world first

--John Grochalski