John Grochalski- Three Poems

pocket change again

broke

as broke as america wants me to be

these bars

these damned clubs robbing me blind

for a little bit of clarity

but we skip class anyway

pocket change again

i’m a bleary broke follower

kris has all of the answers in his smirk

to bookstores

down used cd alleyways

cups of coffee in the beehive

that burn our flesh as we walk rickety steps

but we won’t sue

though i could use the cash

it’s good to not be on the campus

it’s taken our soul and our money

left only questions and desolation

i have debt i haven’t even realized yet

kris says he’s moving in with angie

once we graduate

from these environs

this student loan subsidized respite

from the countless women i can’t stop chasing

like a low bent groucho marx

cigarette in my mouth on the cathedral of learning’s lawn

when i’m not chasing them drunk

on friday saturday nights

can i graduate from this life too?

he says, maybe you could move in

an instant vision of poems

of novels

of coffee and soft music

but i’d just be infiltrating a young love nest

also and give my mother nothing to worry about

when i’m stumbling in drunk somewhere else?

but there is d.c. to consider

colby and whatever dilapidated hell he’s discovered

calvin wants to get a place

but his mother still cuts the crust off of his pb&j

i’m so west so i’m west

go west young man

like kerouac

but i’m so broke

i shouldn’t even be discussing moving out

so we discuss the world instead

the hours pass

somewhere in whatever class it was we skipped

someone has made a point

someone else has refuted it

student loan subsidized intellectuals

soon we’ll all have jobs

that’ll make us as sad as our parents

and everyone else

one grand nationwide parity in pursuit of the dream

this afternoon could last forever

afternoons only last in poems

and kris

and me

we parted company

so soon

you see

i walked the cold

pittsburgh streets

alone

again.

feeback from our trip

to ford’s theatre

i’m sure we would’ve loved

to have seen where lincoln’s legacy lives

we had plans to do the whole tour

high noon

every single event

after a good breakfast at some renowned

washington d.c. diner

coffe eggs bacon history in that order

i was looking forward

to showing my wife where lincoln had been shot

the theatre museum

the home across the street where they took him after

is honest abe’s blood still on the pillow?

but see we never made it to d.c. that week

no momuments

no national gallery or air and space museum

no smithsonian or side trips to georgetown

and no long walks along the mall

they had to move my wife’s radiation appointment

you know how that goes

and her parents stayed with us for five days too

shuttling back and forth

to their own cancer treatments in the city

they don’t know about

my wife’s breast cancer

so…you can pretty much guess how the week went

but we did get back our money on the hotel

all twelve-hundred bucks

my wife played the cancer card

she told them that she was just diagnosed

it really wasn’t a lie

and who’s going to judge a thirty-seven year old

with cancer anyway?

we didn’t cancel the tour with you guys

i mean what’s forty dollars when we were given

so much back

besides the guys at ticketmaster can be cocksuckers

we took the hit on that one

to be honest i almost forgot that we’d booked

a tour with you

because things have been so busy lately

until this feedback email showed up

in my google account

for obvious reasons

i’m going to have to pass

on giving you any feedback

so there’s nothing to tell your tour leaders

and it would be silly

of me to do the survey

still, thank you guys for thinking about us

we’re thinking of trying for d.c. again

once the radiation is over

or maybe next year once the weather breaks

do the whole national capital thing

when the cherry blossoms are in bloom

and our luck seems on

the up and up.

marilyn ascending

she sets next to me

in this comparative religion class

that won’t prepare me for anything in this world

except to think that all religion is daft

clean jeans she is dress shoes

tan cardigan sweater

jet black 1920s flapper hair

coal black eyes

fair-skin red flushed cheeks

trying to get ink off her hands

marilyn, i think marilyn harlow

a name right out of hollywood

how in the hell had i not noticed her before this?

this so-late-in-the-semester-graduating

trapped in cassandralnad

wasting away again in portialand

marilyn really wants this ink off of her hands

almost whines

i wonder where’s the elegant man with the pocket handkerchief

not i dressed like a bum again

unshaved-i-don’t-care

no wonder the girls on this campus won’t talk

won’t stop a minute

my old man tells me

let’s see how long you can look like that in the real world

is she really marilyn harlow?

i look on her desk for some sign

black book bag unpacked l.l. bean

notebook cover with nothing

mine has doodles

poem scraps and mary’s old bubble script

inside the names of our fake kids scratched off

mary i’ve finally gone two weeks without hearing from her

carnie batting her eyes at the bus stop

all the women in the world for me

except the ones i want

i give this marilyn and her inky hands

the side glance the whole hour

would father coughlin my presence all over the air waves

if i could

but in the end i have no courage

and she walks out of this class a sashaying peter

denying that our kid exists.