Spit in the Wind and Hope for the Best

Dreamt about wasps again
And cutting off my right arm,
And my teeth falling out.
Dreamt about being guilty of something dumb.
I’ll tell you about it when you wake up
By that time the good part is already long gone.
We are always telling each other canned stories,
The kind that flatter ourselves
More than anything we could perform live.
I know all of yours,
I like to think you don’t know all of mine.

 Fleetwood Mac songs remind us of our parents’ divorces
And weekends in the smoking section of Chili’s with our dads.
This is the experience of every millenial from a broken home
In the greater midwest.
Of this I am fairly certain,
Unless your family had other brand loyalties.
Maybe you went to Applebee’s.
In any case, I feel sorry for you.
But not as much as I feel sorry for me.

When I graduated high school I got a job at Olive Garden #362
Conveniently located off of I-495.
I studied a handbook which told me
Which of Francis Ford Coppola’s wines paired best
With Vesuvio shrimp and fried mozzarella.
Later, an assistant manager sat me in front of a VHS cassette
Which coached me through how to handle
A guest who had indulged in one too many Italian Inspired Cocktails.
There was no instruction
On how to block out the numbing looped chorus
Of Sinatra and Martin songs
“Fly Me to the Moon”
Blast me into the sun.

My parents put me in a Catholic school
Where we marched into kiddy mass every Wednesday
With a Kleenex on my head.
I’d lock my knees and hold my breath
Hoping for a divine experience
That would let me go home for the rest of the day.
I still try this from time to time
But because my god is a vengeful god,
I will have to come out of the walk-in sooner or later,
Catch my breath,
And paint liquid margarine onto bread sticks.

You and me
We rack our brains for a moment
Mundane and sentimental enough
To put all of the bullshit into perspective.
Like when I was fifteen
Floating down the Fox River
Full of factory sludge
Jamie cut his foot on a rusty shard
And when he yelped he drank in the ugly water
It was July
He shivered violently and vomited in the car
And we laughed and laughed and laughed,
Drying in the sun of the hospital parking lot.

 More often than not,
There’s only a great build up to nothing in particular.
Still, we slam Rip Its
And drown out the car’s dying engine with Metallica
Hoping arrhythmia means something big is coming
Just over the bend.
We pass a truck with a decal on its trailer
“Did YOU pray today?”
We laugh
About how stupid everyone else is
And then we are quiet for a long while. 

Listen there’s two sides to this thing
We’re at the combination Taco Bell/KFC
And what you say next is far more important to me
Than religion
Or political alignments
Or what you think about NFTs
Can I have a bite?

Soon we will hold each other
Horizontal on Ian’s couch.
With stomachaches and a sour taste in our mouths
Try to sleep it off,
And dream of nothing worth remembering.