The Weight Of The World Is Lighter Than

(for Dino)

The weight of the world is lighter than the hair on the backs of your hands.
You forget that thought, change the channel, fumble briefly with the remote
when really, what else could you watch without looking.
Your dinner, three turns on the microwave is strike three on a zero streak.
Some days a new shirt and a sharp wit just don’t cut it.
Bartenders give back your tips:  “Cab fare, buddy,”  they say and you
would like for them to mean it but your secret sober heart knows,
it knows that really, they’re just scared your luck
would slide off the greasy bill and take on life as an infection,
the bastards are quick to wipe down the counters in your wake.
Before the world wobbled on its axis, defeat was not apparent to you;
why, just yesterday she said you could walk on water.
Entrance fee: tequila in a shiny shot glass, salt on her pink girl’s tongue.
All the pretty ones, they like to tell you the unvarnished truth.
“He’s younger than you.”  Well who would have guessed?
She too seemed wise beyond her years, beyond the shimmy of her thighs,
beyond the scruff marks her boots left on your white-on-white wall.
If they ever told you anything at all, the books never did tell you this: 
the gradual scraping away of layers will reveal the wood that is underneath.
From the fresh-scrubbed deck it was a dark drop to the water and along the way
you shed clothing, the name they called you as a child, the town you grew up in.
On shore you hardly recognized yourself, if not for the scar in your smile
when you do that wicked sailor’s grin, “Watch it kid, I’m coming in.”
Maybe you were forgotten, maybe given up for dead; what's certain is that no one
was unduly surprised when you ambled back, cheery as usual, beers all around.
Only later, years later when you ran down that girl, or was it two girls—
you know how the papers exaggerate—did you let on that you learned:
the weight of the world is actually lighter than anything.
It needs to be, light enough yes, to sit so long in your bones.

.

Comments

[checcs]

i really wish that when you get published, this work will grace the first few pages of your book. your play of words disturb me...i won't be able to sleep tonight

[banzai cat]

"...they’re just scared your luck
would slide off the greasy bill and take on life as an infection..."

I like this. :-) An excellent turn of the phrase.

[melissa]

Thank you for the your encouraging words! I haven't been published in print, but I sure hope your "solemn hope" will come into being. Cheers.

[forgottenmachine]

Might I just say, with no hidden agenda or insidious intentions, that you are an extremely talented writer. Without knowing anything else about you, it is my solemn hope that have you not already been published, that gross oversight will be corrected in the future.

I thank you for sharing your words with us.