On rugburn and shirked responsibilities.

We were eleven or twelve
and on top of our game, so we thought
the railroad tracks between
the woods and the back of our development
being our access to the outside world
of retail stores and pizza joints.
The strip mall the two of us had to walk past
in order to get to the department store
whose aisles we haunted
in our baggy jeans and camouflage jackets
usually buying nothing
had mostly been abandoned.
It seemed that no store could stay
in business there, not even a supermarket
that had been shut down and cleared out
long before I moved to the area.
It didn't even resemble a grocery store anymore
its concrete floors stripped of tile
and broken light fixtures dangling like
swinging convicts in an old cow town.
But the hundreds of dead pigeons
that lined the floor like an extra dense shag carpet
are what really got my attention
trapped and starved to death
only to drop one by one to the ground
in that dark mass grave void of all life
except the quickly dwindling bird population.
Why couldn't someone leave a back door open
once in awhile to let them escape
or sweep up the bony piles of feathers
or paint the windows black
or at least cover them with paper
so people walking by did not have to see?
Sometimes I'd slow down to get a look
through the dusty windows at the dead pigeons
and my friend would tell me to stop worrying
about the damn birds and to keep up with him.
I did, until I learned that he was filling the pockets
of that army jacket and those baggy jeans
with merchandise from the department store.
I stopped tagging along after that
and he eventually got arrested.
The strip mall was demolished eight years ago
and a new one sits in its place now.
Once every couple months
I go to the thrift store there
for T-shirts, but that's about it.

+++

Glancing sideways at my boxers thrown on the floor
the green background and billiard ball print
suggesting that it really was all just a game.
The drunken sex was so bad that I distracted myself
by trying to remember what numbered balls
corresponded to which colors
until finally it was over, and that was my life
in a nutshell for a few years.

+++

For a day or two last week
some sort of beetle
was stuck in my bathroom sink.
I brushed my teeth and washed my face
in the morning and watched it swirl around.
I washed my hands after using the toilet
and watched it swirl around.
It never went down the drain for some reason
and I never scooped it out of the sink
because I didn't care enough to bother.
Finally I went in the bathroom and it was gone
a tiny leg bent between forty-five and ninety degrees
the only trace of its stint trapped in the porcelain.
I'm not sure if it was flushed or escaped
and I don't care.

===

People who tell you
that they're good people
usually aren't.
That's one rule
without exception.