There used to be too many things anyway— Plans and people and places to go. If you weren’t careful, you could waste A whole day with someone else. The movies stretched fifty feet high, Went on forever, and smelled like popcorn And kissing.
My favorite bar Didn’t even get to drink itself to death. It died of thirst And loneliness, and didn’t even wait For me to go first. Before it was zilch The pay was a pittance.
Good riddance To baseball, which was even more boring in person Because everyone was smaller in real life, whatever That was, and you had to walk so far and wait so long for a beer. Let’s be clear: Someone could call you out of nowhere And say, “I miss you” And then you’d have to cook them pasta, Listen to Duke Ellington, and dance Until one of you said . Worst was that it felt like it was going somewhere, All of it, proceeding to a point, Arranging like a spider with its web, But when it went, The long nights and handshakes and work, It proved itself figment And fragment, A thin hypothesis In the process of disproof, then .
Now you can’t even vanish In plain sight. You disappear Into the year. Whoever loves you can’t even volunteer To be there.
Shopping lives on Like lichen, And won’t die. I’d kill for a high-five, Or a fair fight. You can’t even get your ass kicked anymore.
I wish I could say, “What survives of us is love,” But love was first to go. Bread stayed, And booze, thank god, And you. It still rains.
And I can still complain T.
