STUMBLE

He had that look,
that Van Cleef
smirk,
sitting over in a dark corner
of whiskey nightmares
and I had my own;
the stare-down
of a modern day O.K
Corral
but whiskey was on
the mind of tonight’s slingers
with the rapid fire
of throw down
and memory loss,
rivaling lobotomy.

“Troubles my friend?”, I asked.

And the dialogue of all wrong
was right and with the blur of traffic
outside the neon oasis,
our thoughts turned
into making all good
with another whiskey swallow.

And I thought of tomorrow’s
daybreak, with
a dry and bleary stumble
to a cold rinse
and hot cup,
probably wonder
if that stranger thought the same
with his cold splash
or the million cold splashes
in troubled times.

How youth, I thought,
after Flexible Flyer dreams,
had turned to heel worn down
concrete travel
and with a click
of instant quick check,
Good Morning America’s,
starched hair forecast
called for cloudy skies,
through the week.

“No shit”, I said to no one.

Jim Senetto about Jim Senetto

My father was quiet; loving, provider but quiet…I never knew a grandfather, his side, or his brother lost at 28 and I was told not to ask. So quiet I was…me, the quiet one, second echelon in a group of friends…quiet in the confessional booth I was brought to…why tell a stranger, in a dark booth sitting behind mesh, my woes, thinking it just might be his woes were worse than mine (I’ve later learned, some in collars should have sat on the other side of that mesh window, confessing). I was drafted in ’66, taught how to kill strangers and my mouth began to question why and with some friends now dead from bullets of insanity, I became alive, vowing never to be as quiet as my father. He had his reasons, I’m sure, old school and all of that, but I had to break the chain. Art, photography, music, poetry is my voice and it’s all fair game…say it loud, some will listen and that is good enough for me.