Thursday, January 30, 2014

poem of the day 01.30.14


on george rubio’s porch

calvin had this thing
about pissing on george rubio’s porch

we’d be at the bar or the strip club
and out of nowhere he’d turn to me and say
let’s go and take a piss on george rubio’s porch

it seemed a little nonsensical to me
especially when surrounded by beer and half-naked women

i wasn’t george rubio’s biggest fan
but i didn’t want to piss on his porch either

i didn’t know what it was for calvin

george rubio was his friend
i thought they were tight

but then there’d calvin go
some stripper’s ass in his face
his fifth or sixth bottle of beer half-finished
talking about pissing on george rubio’s porch

fuck george rubio he’d say
then he’d down his beer and shove another dollar
in the stripper’s g-string

she’d smile and shake her ass and walk away
and calvin would never know it

he was in the zone

maybe it was a macho thing
some way for calvin to get back at george
for always spiking his coffee with ketchup and salt
saturdays at the eat’n’park

man, if my girlfriend only knew what we were doing
the summer i turned twenty-one

she and i argued all of the time back then
she thought that i was cheating on her

i guess i was with beer and strippers
and dates to piss on george rubio’s porch

it was the kind of shit you did when you were drunk
and young and out of options

but there we’d go
neither of us in any shape to drive
crawling slowly up city streets
looking for george rubio’s house

calvin always had the bass in his car going too high
and i worried we’d get caught

but no one ever came out

soon enough there we’d be
standing on a dark porch long after midnight

on george rubio’s porch
filled with old bats and gloves
chairs that were used to save parking spots in the winter
a cooler george used for soda and beer when he went fishing

calvin would turn away from me
and i’d turn away from him

in no time came the hot hiss of urine on concrete
on all george’s stuff  and in the cooler too

then the quiet laughter of two idiots getting their last kicks
not worrying about jobs or money or girlfriends
or beer or strippers of the future

but handling the task at hand

pissing on george rubio’s porch
on a humid summer night in pittsburgh

when the age of twenty-one felt like it was going to last forever

and the rising sun was like a pause button
on all the new good times
we thought we were always going to have.

                                               

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