WELL,
C Ra McGuirt
WELL,
here I am about to
pick up my Russian nephew
(as opposed to my Scotch-Irish/
Tahitian-Samoan nephew)
from kindergarten at the school
across from the store where I used to buy
my comic books and cigarettes
when I was too young to drive.
I make the market to snag a beer
and find some Little Kings Cream Ale
on sale for a dollar thirty-five a quart.
It seems a bargain, so I take two,
even though I know
that my money’s running low
and that twenty years of beer
have failed to save me.
I have some bills to mail
and there’s a box
right by the phonebooth...
know that phonebooth...
my old phonebooth...
I’ll be damned.
That’s the same booth I used to use
to make my sensitive substance deals
away from authoritarian ears
in the days when I was living
just an easy walk from here.
It doesn’t look as though they’ve changed it.
That dust could be eighteen years old...
As I drop the letters, I have to think
Maybe there’s a poem in this...
And then I see
standing by the phonebooth
someone with a brand new beard
wearing ancient jeans
mirror shades and an acid grin
pointing a finger at himself
It’s myself at seventeen,
saying I predict
that you will graduate eighty-fourth
in a class of two hundred and twelve,
drop out of college
go to Europe
and be married.
You’ll have one late affair, and be
divorced for other reasons.
You’ll never go back to college
so far as I can see.
You’ll chef to suvive
for fourteen years,
fall, and recieve a settlement
which you will have squandered
by the time that you meet me.
We’ve had two women, and at least
eighteen more are waiting:
if you survive the Arizonan
you should be with the Muscovite
by now...
You’ll stop writing poetry
be bitten by a spider
become a professional wrestler
and go to New Orleans.
You’ll drive a truck to Tampa
always have trouble sleeping
and think that you’ve gone crazy
on more than one occasion.
You’ll consider suicide
be totally self-indulgent
and make a fucking fool of me
at least ten thousand times.
Your best poems are before you
and I don’t see your name in lights
but i hear it on the street sometimes.
It could be that you might
mean something more
than you do right now,
but I’m not promising
anything.
You’ll move in with your father
watch your grandad die
drive his Delta 88
and pawn that ring he gave you.
You’ll waste all of your patience
on those who don’t deserve it,
treat the best ones badly
and wallow in regret.
One day, you’ll wake to check the mail
and there will be nothing there for you.
You’ll notice that you need new tires.
Too bad you put them up your nose
when you had money. Your woman will be
sick with stress, and nothing you do
will even begin to make it right.
The book you thought
would sell by then
will not.
Your woman will send you to pick up the child
of her visiting sister, and you will agree,
go down the road and stop for beer
buy Little Kings Ale and meet yourself
for a moment or two, and take the child
home and feed him, and make his bed;
drink two quarts of Little Kings Ale
while trying to make a poem of me
and dinner for your woman
and a paper airplane for the child
neither of whom will be satisfied.
Tomorrow, you’ll clean crappers
and empty trash. On Thursday night
you’ll run the monthly open mic.
I don’t know if you’ll win the Slam
next month, or when your woman
will sleep with you again.
Then what good are you? I asked.
He laughed and faded. I drove across
the street to the school
picked up the kid,
and this is how
it ends
until tomorrow.
