Wednesday, November 7, 2012

poem of the day 11.07.12

you can’t go home again
 
but you can waste hours
scanning the faces of people on social networks
remembering the old bullies
from grade school
and all of the pretty girls who’ve gone gray
and you can make ten hour playlists
of all the old songs
play them on your morning walk all week
moving to the beat of endless regret
and you can see the faces of friends
who have vanished
like the thick blue smoke of first sickly cigarettes
on the way home from high school
or flaky snuff vomited on those safe childhood streets
contemplate your own insignificance
then
and now
picture endless do-overs in your head
first poems scribbled on homemade comic books
the fights you backed away from
the girl with the sweet face in the front seat
of some ugly jock’s car
and how you never talked to her
even though she gave you guns’n’roses
nerf football championships
and wiffleball world series
the smell of home on a wednesday night
you can’t go home again
no
old tommy wolfe was right about that
but you can kill the now
obsessing over the unmovable feast of time
until it makes you grow sullen and mad
paralyzed on a street corner
looking at the sagging man in the warped window
of a discount store
wondering where and when
it all
went
knowing that it wasn’t that good in the first place
but for some reason
how right then
you’d wish it all back.

2 comments:

Sunshine and Shadows said...

I love the images you create.

Óscar Varona said...

Jeez, Grochalski, you're great!!! I'm going to read it again. Love it.