You're typical: cigarettes and liquor and tailored, fitted hats,

with shoes that blend seamlessly 

with the dirt, the earth, the nature of our youth.

Dark, but iridescent, eyes that change 

with the passing of your memories

fade and return, unmoved.

And what left, but an empty glass and ring on the table 

of condensation--condescension-- gliding downward 

to form an imprint of our heavy descent
into contemplation and condemnation,

beaten down with nothing but our own unnecessary torment?

Victors hail spoils; we linger at the burdens in dark nights

lit by glowing neon signs and surrounded 

by docks of stable lives, symbols of "the other side."

Surrounded by norms, we wrote to define a character 

not typical of the warped figures in our modern, magazine age,

nor of the cliched, sepia prints that speak of

cigarettes and liquor and tailored, fitted hats.

And who's to say life isn't more than cafes and bookshops

and the same routines that drive our generation 

into apathy and cubicles until we're aged and our soles only touch

Corporate Carpets?

We dreamt once, on the road past strip malls and gas stations,

that we would leave this earth at last call,

when we were filled--satisfied--with our drink and consumption,

free from guilt from our actions and the necessity to leave
any sort of mark beyond a faded signature on the wall:

the possibility of eternity.

August 2010