THE CHOICE
I feel how painful it can be
for myself and the world around me.
I carry this weight both by choice
and not by choice
and often I don’t realize there is a choice
Then I hear the woman across the street
dragging out garbage cans,
the metal cans scraping across the asphalt
underneath her voice
that cusses out her husband
for neglecting them yet again
Or the colorful bird chirping
in the trees behind my backdoor.
I watch it go up in the air, swoop
back down, peck at the ground
and up it goes again, glorious
and beautiful like a song in the air,
until it slams into a glass window,
and snaps its neck, a twitch,
a twist, the last gasp.
Soon to be food for a neighborhood cat
Or a photo I saw of Warren Oates
sitting bearded on his couch,
a smile on his face,
his big gut stretching out
a Triumph motorcycle T-shirt,
content with who he was:
a Gatling-gun Buddha
not knowing or caring
he’d be dead within a year.
____________
FOR THE CONMAN
The conman, the liar, the thief
is cold in the grave.
Rotting down from 240 pounds to
90 thousand self-inflicted
grifts.
I was told you were buried in sweats,
sneakers,
and a cardigan sweater
buttoned
over a New England Patriots
T-shirt.
I wasn’t there because
I didn’t want to be.
I said “so long, fucker,”
drank too much
and played the music
you would’ve liked.
It was more fitting, more
human than to turn
around
on a childhood
with open palms
full of vacant highways.
But I remembered your asphalt feet
always out on the road.
Your thick black hair,
mustache, and rolling a joint
with one hand.
I was seven, maybe younger,
you were everything to me then,
what happened?
You’d mouth the words
to a Bob Seger song,
the steering wheel of your
’76 sky blue Chevy Nova
gripped in your hands,
and at the end of Wilson Ave
you’d put me on your lap,
and let me steer the car home,
your legs working the clutch
and the brake.
I didn’t see then you’d leave
me your life shattering gifts:
PTSD and madness, tucked
behind the same pale blue eyes
we share.
It all fell apart,
a crumbling of walls,
when you decided to make me
lie with you
and for you, and I did.
The next morning I always felt
terrible. Awful.
I never told you this, but
it was me at 14 years old
who called the police
and told them about the red car
you stole
from the car rental place.
And as the tennis ball rolled
off the roof
of our apartment building
and I saw you being taken away
in handcuffs
I caught that ball in my baseball glove.
Instead of looking at you
being stuffed in to the back
of the cop car
I tossed the ball up on the roof
again
and again.
I caught it every time.
____________
DYNAMITE UNDER THE NAILS
People play it too safe.
There are too many do-gooders
hung up on how much
they have
and how they should speak
properly
in front of others.
No one rolls the sevens
and elevens
with rusty coffin nails
anymore.
No one watches Memento Mori
pull up her stockings
before putting on a pair
of black boots.
No one embraces her skeleton
in a dark, empty,
dance hall
and spins her until
she loses her ribs in
the face
of blushing
demons.
No one pours her another drink
when she moans because your
worked-over hand
is moving
up her thigh.
People are afraid.
Afraid of life. Afraid of death.
Snug and safe inside
the worthless worlds
worlds we are supposed to be
thankful for?
We should be into it for the beauty,
the lust, the tight,
the pain, the agony,
the real, the hard,
and for the scratches
across our backs
that erupt like
dynamite underneath
the fingerprints.
____________
TOO MUCH WORK
I woke up after five hours
of sleep
and a series of strange
dreams,
and said to myself,
“today is the day.
It’s finally here. I’m going
to scream like an animal in a trap
and jump out the window.
Forty-seven years and I can
no longer take it.
I’m done with it all.”
Then I remembered
I live in a basement
apartment.
I’d have to open the window,
stand on the couch,
pull myself up through
the window
and crawl out onto the grass.
No one would care. It would
just be me, exhausted,
embarrassed,
and winded.
My chubby body sprawled out
on the grass
in my boxers and T-shirt.
Doing nothing
but looking up at the sky
and feeling real stupid.
The woman across the street
would say to her husband,
“Jimmy, what’s he doing?”
They’d call the police
for being outside in my underwear.
The police would call an ambulance
to take me to the nuthouse.
Where they’d stick me with needles
and make me talk in group therapy
sessions
with drool running down my face.
It all sounded like too much
work.
Everything is too much work.
I made coffee instead.
I poured a cup,
lit a cigarette,
and said, “You’ll get me
soon or later,
but not today. Today
I’ll skip up and down
the aisles
of a graveyard
singing the songs
of the doomed
at the top of my lungs.”
I took another sip
of black coffee
and felt a spark,
the smallest of embers
knocking around inside
of me
like a pinball.
“There’s still some life
in you yet, Old man,” I said,
smiling through my stained,
chipped,
and broken teeth.
I pulled the coffee
up to my aging face
and took another
hot, steaming, sip
and began to laugh
hysterically
in the absurd silence
of my living room.
____________
Frank Reardon was born in 1974 in Boston, Massachusetts, and currently lives in Minot, North Dakota. Frank has published poetry and short stories in many reviews, journals and online zines. His first poetry collection, Interstate Chokehold, was published by NeoPoiesis Press in 2009 as well as his second poetry collection Nirvana Haymaker in 2012. His third poetry collection Blood Music was published by Punk Hostage Press in 2013. In 2014 Reardon published a chapbook with Dog On A Chain Press titled The Broken Halo Blues. In 2019 Frank published a poetry collection Loud Love on the Sevens and Elevens. Frank is currently working on more short fiction, and is in rewrite phase of a novel
Rusty Truck 