Poem 27/30 Lowering the Bar

hmmmm I might be lowering the bar on the writing, too, just to get through this 30/30. The best way to look at it is that it's a way of committing to a daily discipline, and I end up with 30 drafts, some of which may survive.

LOWERING THE BAR

I will dump the guy in 8 hours if you show up with a fully packed van ready to ride. If that doesn't happen, we will drink coffee on Saturday morning.

She hit “send” and got dressed, thigh high stockings under jeans and Cowboy boots, just in case.

You look like every girl I chased through the maze of Stanton and Suffolk, when my junk levels were low enough to care about it, he responded. Meet me on the avenue. We’ll live like hermits, hit the road like Kerouac.

His driver’s license was suspended. He packed a change of clothes, just in case, and bought a bus ticket.

They spent New Year’s Eve together. Five years later, he’s married and she’s still writing about it.

She’s already had the best sex she’s ever going to have. The bar has fallen to the floor; she trips over it getting out of bed.

The man beside her sleeps lightly until mid-morning, when he lumbers into oblivion.

Recently, her dreams have begun to anger her, centered on impossible tasks and unlikely phone calls from people who despise her. She wakes up annoyed with herself for her semi-conscious acquiescence, and heads for the computer.

This is the last second street story, she swears, no more fucking-in-abandoned- building scenarios. She got pregnant that way once, convinced by cocaine that the police had surrounded the block; she didn’t even like the guy she was with, but there was nothing else to do.

Some days she doesn’t like the guy in the bed, either, but she figures she might like him again the next, so she distracts herself with solitary porn. He does the same.

Maybe that’s called getting along. She’s never tried it before, so can’t say for sure.

© puma perl, 4/27/11