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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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JAMES BABBS Kaitlyn when we got back to my house she started looking at all the books lining the shelves in my living room have you read all of these she asked I said no but most of them some more than once she told me she wasn't much of a reader but she loved music for the first time I noticed how young she was at the bar she'd come over to me sliding into the seat next to mine when she asked me to buy her a drink I took one look at her and said of course maybe if I had been a better man I would have sent her home I would have told her to stop hanging out in bars stop going home with strangers maybe I would have told her to find herself a nice young man and do something with her life but I didn't no I led her down the hallway into the bedroom and drowned myself in the warm ocean of her youth I took everything from her she was willing to give me and for those few hours life didn't feel so terrible for those few hours lost inside the darkness I got to hold her and touch her and I didn't feel old or tired or alone More Reasons For Drinking as if I didn't have enough of them already this weekend I've come up with even more reasons for drinking earlier in the week the car broke down and I had to have it towed home and it cost me over six hundred dollars to get it running again and they've been talking about layoffs at work again because things are really slow now and have been for several weeks and then there was my sister calling me early one morning pulling me out of a good sleep she cried into the phone about something I'd done to her and I just laid there listening to her go on and I didn't say anything and I just found this birthday card my girlfriend sent me last year telling me how much she loved me but we're not together anymore and now I'm sitting here watching the clouds through the window thickening across the sky the light getting darker all the time it looks like it's going to rain Maybe She's Waiting maybe she's waiting for me parked in the driveway listening to the radio with the engine turned off she knows I'm on my way home just a few miles away we haven't seen each other we haven't talked in-- how long has it been? I guess it's longer than I think but I can see her there sitting in her little black car maybe she's waiting because she wants to tell me she's sorry when I get there she'll get out and run over to me I'll look at her beautiful face before kissing her on the mouth I'm getting closer now my house not too far away just past this last thicket of trees over the next rise I can't hardly wait I'm almost there I still live and die a little each day in the same small town where I grew up. I work for the government but don't like to talk about it. I like getting drunk and writing and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference because both of them can be very intoxicating. I don't like okra and never did but I could eat lima beans every day of the week. Some recent poems have appeared in my dreams and in-Abbey, Gutter Eloquence, Fight These Bastards, Verse Wisconsin and Zygote In My Coffee. |
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