poem of the day 03.26.15

campo

campo was the funny guy

at the wine store

he had a ceaseless energy

and a legion of sycophants

who followed him around and hung on his every word

i disliked him from the onset

i was thirty-two and the rest of them

were barely pushing twenty in the warehouse

which made me a road sign warning to them

a decade full of dead ends they’d be fools to repeat

campo gave everyone nicknames

c-train, hoss, j-dog and futureman

for some reason he chose johnson for me

it stuck

the bosses and even the bartender

across the street called me that

it amazed me what i’d answer to

for a paycheck and a three-dollar buyback

on the third round

but then again i always hated the sound of my own name

campo had an ease with the customers that i did not

he could sell and sell

while i just hung around dusting bottles

and listening to the 1950s music the store pumped in

i got a reputation for being surly and aloof

although i just didn’t know how to relate to a lot of the kids

on weekends we had hot looking wine pourers

come in from the distributers

to pour samples for the customers

campo spent his whole work day at the tasting center

flirting with girls and getting drunk

the assistant manager had me in his office weekly

for a conversation about my attitude

he thought campo was the greatest

be more like campo, he told me

campo makes the world his own playground

but when i went to spend my day

flirting with the wine pouring girls

the assistant manager tossed my ass in the warehouse

for drinking on the job

he made me count broken vodka bottles

on evenings campo and the assistant boss

would stand in front of a large tv

they’d watch hockey and tell tall tales about the wine pourers

campo would do play-by-play

and shout outrageous platitudes at the screen

he talked about how many of the pourers he nailed

while i ran around cleaning wine spills and hauling boxes

scratching the collection of pink write-up slips in my back pocket

when i quit the wine store

campo was the only guy i saw on my way out

he was just an hour into another nine-hour shift

in his own personal minimum-wage playground

we shook hands

and he called me johnson one last time

then i sat in my car alone

drinking the rest of a warm beer

from the morning drive to work

watching as campo played the clown for all of his boys

while they collected shopping carts and laughed

thinking some guys had it good

and some guys just didn’t get it at all.