I never believed my dad when he said he drank
Because he knew the meaning of everything
Was inscribed on the bottom of a beer bottle.
Being young,
I never understood what he meant.
See, Dad never explained anything,
He just said,
“You’ll understand when you’re older.”
So now I’m fifteen years older,
And it’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning,
And I find myself staring
Into the depths of my beer,
Looking for my Dad’s answer.
I’m surrounded by a group of comrades.
We huddle together for warmth,
Watching the fireflies play around us,
Their inner glow
Imprinting themselves on our retinas
While we bathe in the onyx ink of a new moon.
Half empty beer bottles
Wear us like dime store jewelry.
Incendiary leeches cling to our fingers-
Disguised as burning cigarettes,
Our faces caught in their fiery glow with every drag
Only to recede again into a blanket of shadow and smoke.
Our lips move behind this shifting wall of lung dust.
Whispering memories that fade
With each tilt of the speaking glass.
None can remember the last time they said
“When I grow up, I’m going to be a…”
But everybody remembers saying
“When I was young, I wanted to be a…”
So we struggle along,
Hampered by our own inadequacies.
Nursing their lame bodies
With alcohol and talk.
Samson
Describes women he’ll never sleep with,
Job
Shows us money he’ll never make,
Joseph
Describes dreams he’ll never fulfill,
And I recite poems
I’ll never be able to write.
Somebody makes a joke of those melodramatic lines.
We laugh,
Too jaded to cry anymore.
The noise wakes a woman next door
Who hasn’t been alive since her daughter died.
She would yell down at us
Except we are all she has.
On the other side of the fence
A man drinks with us.
Childhood astronaut
Turned adulthood office worker.
Never given the chance to orbit anything more
Than a cubical.
An empty bladder joins us from the bathroom.
Full mind and empty stomach have thrown him off kilter.
Collapses into a chair that nearly falls from beneath him.
Fitting.
Unbalanced furniture
For unbalanced people.
From ashtray to mouth and back
The leeches join the fireflies’ dance
As meat sizzles on the BBQ-
Mixing with cricket calls and road noise.
All of this sending Moses
Into a nostalgic mental storm of home-
Of midnight swims in the muddy river-
Of fireflies caught in old mayonnaise jars.
We shift in our chairs,
Invisible shackles adjusted
To more comfortable positions.
While freedom watches our constraint
From the rooftop-
Masquerading as a cat
That answers to Hunger, Sleep, and Lust.
So the night wears on
Us.
Silence settles in,
Takes up a chair at the head of the table,
Stares into our skins,
Reminds us of everything we aren’t going to be,
Forces our eyes to wander back to the fireflies.
Spinning, sliding, shifting
Always rushing forward
Never looking behind.
Thoughts of our dying hope are interrupted
By the sound of another bottle being opened.
As the cool ambrosia slithers into me
The beer tastes bitter on my tongue
And my tongue tastes bitter to the beer.
Rob says, "I'm an english major studying at San Jose State University and I write and perform poetry in my spare time. Iron Maiden, yoga, and literature are all on my 'shit's that cool' list."