Forget Tomorrow

Thank your lucky stars.
Your generation has it better than ours.
We had to hang out in bars:
in the mists of smoke,
with regular customers as coworkers
(on the labor of numb)
and beers as friends.

Nowadays speak easys have given way
to still-picture forums
for a new round of youth
whose hope too was stolen.

Find peers to cheer you, where and while you can.
Such are the lots of the common man.

Keeping Company

While Autumn air pinched us with frost,
I told my cousin of my girlfriend.
She was a different breed:
one on whom I could depend.
She had the love I need.

Where leaves descend to die,
my cousin and I,
shared in tales of women,
with beer-wet lips.

I said how she was loyal.
He said how his was faithful and each of us thought in silence.
Those moments, for which I'm grateful,
crystallize as powdery dew on bark's dark side,
in a mind grey with age.

My girl was too shy to display her love publicly.
It was something too personal to bare before any witness but me.
Less joy I had known, less warmth I could conceive, 'fore her's was shown.
Hands worn from a day's chopping, muscles torn, she massaged the weariness away.
My body barely settled in its' chair before a hot meal was laid there at our table.

His girl was his lap-warmer.
He would fall on his couch from a salesman's day of walking.
Then his boots were gone and her arms encircled his shoulders.
She'd hear his jokes and they'd share a laugh.
He loved to light candles and join her bubble bath.

The wind pressed us, trying to enter our thoughts.
We enjoyed recalled feelings for a while more.
Finally we rejoined everyone.

Don't Leave Me

At the dispersal of a party, be it family gathering at holiday, friends for a drink, a dance club's closing, or any occasion there's a sensation of emptying in the revelers. Neural rows of connections between us snap off. Like series of usb ports unplugged.
It's hardwired in us to crave company, to love society. Some are satisfied with the gathering and look forward to the next. A remainder of the last party stays together to continue elsewhere. Singles split off to return to solitude. Some stay at the place of meeting to clean up or 'cause they live there. Maybe to linger and admire the setting. Some work to counter the flow of the mob, convince people to stay, and sometimes have charisma or new events enough to hold onto most of the crowd. On the greatest of scales: this last role in the party is fulfilled by politicians, bankers, and bureaucrats.
In the context of mingling, lawmakers are party-planners. Lawyers referees for our games. Cops and armies bouncers who decide who gets in without sneaking and who stays without wanting. Executors are hosts who won't give dinner to guests who repeatedly refuse to play. Then oppression is the neurosis of someone who fears the band he has assembled hates him and takes every measure to keep as many people as close as possible. Of course "The Man" in his manor is not inviting the rabble into his house but he's touching us through his currency, military, and infrastructure. He doesn't want to let go. The shame is these types seem to eventually become the depraved bully. The madman who hits a woman if she tries to run away and then will say how much he cares while stroking her face. Like that chick from the Stephen King movie who breaks a guy's legs...