Well Buk

Well Buk

Things aren’t going so well

Almost ready to pull some of your books down from the shelf

Well Buk

Things aren’t going so well

And here I am writing a poem

The more things change…

Bullshit, you’d say

And you’d be right

Buk, I’m sitting here in a house I might not be able to continue to afford

(You’d laugh, O you’d laugh!)

I’m thinking of that late spring night in Spokane

In that shitty apartment with the shitty roommate

I was drinking Boone’s Farm, strawberry I think

And the shitty roommate told me to turn on the radio

He’d entered my name in a drawing because he’d already entered himself earlier

So I did

And the DJ said my name

I’d won $50 without doing anything

Mentally I was already converting that $50 to Boone’s and Lucky Strikes

When the DJ said as a winner I was now entered in a grand prize drawing

Big deal, I thought

But damned if I didn’t win that grand prize a few days later

A thousand bucks

Used it to get out of Spokane and start this life

Went from Boone’s Farm to wine with corks and gave up the smokes eventually

You woulda laughed, o you woulda laughed!

Well Buk I quit writing for a few years there but started up again

Stories this time, rarely poems

Been doing it for over a decade now

Nothing like what I wrote in those Spokane days

When the ghosts in my haunted head were much more interesting

And I could feel the vastness of the stars

I still feel that vastness, sometimes

The Grim Reaper touch isn’t that far away, probably

Which is why I think it was probably dumb to give up the smokes

Win some, lose some I guess

But I tell you Buk

Spokane was some fucked-up shit for sure

Yet I miss the realness of it

Everything seems so vague now

Guess that’s what they call maturity

I miss the lover’s touch and the fire of mind

Don’t really miss the Boone’s Farm, though, or the shitty roommate

Call it a draw, then

This is an old man poem, Buk

A looking-back poem

I thought I was an old man then

I guess we all feel old, all the time

I wrote a story last month, Buk

Pretty decent one I thought

Got all ready to submit it

And realized it didn’t have a happy ending and the kid didn’t live

So there’s no market for it

That’s how it is now, Buk

Happy endings are good

Weird endings are ok

Bleak endings don’t have a market

The kid in Cujo would make it today

And no one reads poetry

Shit Buk, maybe I’m not doing so well

But I’m still writing

This poem is in longhand, even (like those old Spokane days)

My handwriting is terrible but at least I don’t have the shakes

I curbed my excesses, Buk

Decided I wanted to live after all

So I can’t complain

But I tell ya, Buk

I really miss the smokes.

--4/25/16