Breakneck Speed

Trying new beers made the routine feel important.
Each new pint felt like a scratch on a prison wall.
All the young professionals here probably had jobs more lucrative than mine,
but fuck them, because lying’s still legal.

Friends from middle school hanging onto the dregs of youth,
living like teenagers on the edge of a rooftop.
This band scored his teenage years,
and for me it was a chance to look well-adjusted.

One of us lived with his partner.
His mom supplementing half of his rent.
You could tell by his smile he knew how little he’d earned this,
yet every sentence still ended with some casual mention of his partnered status.

God played a prank on the well-meaning citizens of New York by inventing Jersey.
I’d rather be homeless.

If you can call a Pro Tools license a music career,
the kid knew how to bring New York’s perpetually up-and-coming artists into a room.

Though I was unlikely to tell him how impressive this lifestyle was,
it would be a spark in a dead engine for me to have half of what this kid had.

Smiling, telling stories about a hobby,
like a sprouting root pushing through a city of sticky tar.

Growing something fragile in a field of scythes,
keeping enough fence around his soul
to stop people like me from tearing it out.

He had somehow protected the part of himself
that still knew how to care.

If I could put down my liver crushers,
maybe I’d remember how to want something.