by Scott Laudati
A Girl From Greenwich Village
It’s about time I came over.
Before the plane disappeared
and the bombs dropped
and the dog parks emptied
with fresh coats
falling over soiled snow.
- Everyone
following single file
over the cliff -
but we don’t have to.
You’ve got the book of love now.
I left it on your coffee table
blank of opinion.
There’s a pen on the floor,
use it,
I won’t walk away.
Use it,
while the thought of me
still exorcises
the loneliness in you.
Please fill those pages now.
I know you will when the
yellow birds fly away,
but I want you to remember me
like this -
carrying you over
the garbage piles
on Thompson Street,
frozen over like igloos
for the rats.
It’s about time I came over.
For coffee at midnight.
For sunrise bedtime.
Remember me spilling wine
on your couch
and ducking pigeons
on your stoop.
You’ve got the pen,
use it.
You saved me from that place
I go all the time
but barely mention.
I thought it would be a new guitar
or a better job
or a poem highlighted
in a used book.
But it never is.
Just a look from the girl
who was
never broken by the world.
A runny nose
and an underserved smile
was all it took to escape
the firing squad of my mind.
My Friend Tom
My friend Tom always understood me,
even at the times
when I scared
myself.
I was always screaming for an audience
up on a guitar amp
and then I’d drink too much
and quiet down from the pills.
Tom just sat there smiling
sipping a dark beer
enjoying it
watching me go sweaty and crazy
knowing that we’d both end up at the same place.
And that’s what I learned after my youth passed me by.
I wanted to be great, but never proved it
with anything more than words,
and by thirty-five the only thing I was running
on was caffeine.
Tom wanted to be the best average person he could be,
and always had been,
since the day I’d met him.
And as much as I hate people
who have figured out how to be happy,
Tom is one
who I think deserves it.
You Just Can't Win or A Poem For Lindsay Lohan's Personal Assistant
When you move to Manhattan
you meet a lot of people
(mainly women)
who come from “means.”
They hang out in the marble lobbies
of boutique hotels
and drink fancy cocktails
and talk a lot of shit.
I met a girl on the job
who started a “non-profit”
where basically
you asked your parents
not to give you any Christmas gifts.
Instead,
you had them donate the gift money
to the “non-profit” on Christmas morning
that one year.
And from there it went to whatever
tragedy du jour was in fashion
with her famous friends.
Our first date (our only date)
went fine.
She liked country music
so we found a karaoke bar
and got drunk and sang
Taylor Swift songs.
She said we sounded like a real band
and when I asked her
if she wanted to go to the waterfront
and look at the skyline
she said,
“My bedroom has a better view.”
Later, I sat with a cigarette
on her roof top patio
overlooking all of
downtown Manhattan
and
I thought about how nice
life was to those who could
forfeit their Christmas money
and still pay rent on an apartment
with a roof top patio
that overlooked
all of
downtown Manhattan.
Eventually I had to leave
and I ate for the first time
that day
the one piece of dollar pizza
I could scum up enough
change to buy.
And all around me were
one legged bums
and
Mexican families with seven kids
and the short black man
with no teeth
who sang The Lollipop Guild song
for some loot.
And I knew I’d never be her hero.
And it wasn’t even winter -
every half-frozen puddle
I stomped through broke apart,
and when
the ripples
came back together
it was still my stupid face
I was staring at.
She may have been the savior
of the damned
but the next morningI had
a text message that said,
“You’re really nice,
but I can’t date a bellman.
It just wouldn’t look right.”
It was another night
I abandoned my dog
for a woman
that I’d never get back.
****
Scott Laudati lives in NYC. He wrote Bone House and Camp Winapooka. Visit him @ScottLaudati.