Weeknight Skydive
We got the swivel-arm blues,
a clap of jugs jazzing a daytime drowse
down to a snowy table.
It’s the usual jawcrack Zippo schtick:
Everyone stack yer smokes
and let’s do this shit,
three for the skirts,
two for the ditch,
one for the witch.
Weeknight drunks are the frigid
cousins of Saturday skydives.
With a hot waitress it’s a runaway –
everything crushed into a
three-figure bar tab.
The black creeps with
those first steps after paying -
a dizzy dip to the can
followed by offsales
in the parking lot.
Driver’s fugged but he hits it,
done this a hundred times and
we won’t get home otherwise.
Five douchebags carside,
Grand Funk and a left-hander,
three hundred bucks on our mugs.
Swerving like the night
cheated on us in plain view:
Endangerment.
The crash is a blur of snowcrush,
swantail bumper to the curb,
pedal shot-legged to the ground,
a smash and a beat.
From the back seat
someone pastes the moment
with a sad laugh.
Side of the road,
orange hazard strobe,
five cocks at leisure with
nicotine and a bit of blood.
“I know my car” was the
last thing we heard.
Who coulda known we’d hit that Dodge,
90 over and bad-end the curb,
send some cat to the emergency room?
Who coulda known that tonight
we’d feel our fingers,
find out that life ain’t all that precious,
that it’s just a bunch of endings
packaged with matches and love?
© Michael Gravel