poem of the day 05.08.10

bravado

we’ve run out of bravado
out of beer in plastic sacks at our feet
as we drive the city at night

we’ve run out of young women
to try and impress
and must settle for conversation
over lackluster meals

we must wrestle with our choices

with our old gray selves

i sort of like it
but i don’t know about you

i always thought that there was
something sinister in you
just beneath the smirk

something just waiting to break out
that just got buried

in the strip malls and fast food chains of suburbia

that got strangled in kids and wives and electric bills

if that’s what happened
then it happens to the best of us

i don’t know
i guess i just kept waiting for you
to show up at the door

one of the ones i closed a long time ago

i thought you’d pry it open

but instead you became crippled

bravado isn’t much to me anymore

i’ll take wine over a fistfight
but i don’t know how you chose god
the way that some poor fools
get addicted to drugs or gambling

that old fucker just takes and takes
and never gives it back

he’s another kind of crutch, my friend

the only difference is that people
can come back from the booze and drugs

they can stop themselves from placing a bet
they can resurrect better than any jesus every could

but once you get lost in god
you’re mostly gone forever

it takes guts to do it, i’m sure


i just don’t think i have the stomach for it
and i never thought
it would’ve happened to you