the accountant

by John Grochalski

arjun was an accountant
in a law firm for thirty years
but he can’t work a copier machine
to print out his resume

he’s been out of work for four years
even though the government tells us
that the economy is growing

arjun doesn’t want to work at wal-mart, he says
i left india thiry-five years ago to avoid that

arjun’s brown skin is pale and weathered
and he’s too thin

he says, i get interviewed for these jobs
that i can do in my sleep

and i still don’t get them!

he says, you must know people like me

too many of them, i say

we wait for the copy machine to start spitting out
thirty years of arjun’s professional life

it all fits on one page
all those years on one page

arjun takes the copies from me
he shakes my hand

he says, you are a great man
because i can push a button

i wish him good luck
and send him on his way

sit back down and check out a newspaper
full of expensive wars and celebrity news

wait for the next arjun
to come walking through the door.  

jack and the giant jukebox

by John Grochalski

jack can’t get the jukebox to play
goddamned digital….he says

people are laughing at him
because they’ve been laughing at him for years

i just want to play a little grateful dead

he says it
it sounds like begging

we watch jack and the giant jukebox
that takes up half the wall in this place

it turns into a camera
white light is flashing throughout the bar

on the screen there are pictures of a frustrated jack
trying to put dollar bills in the machine

pictures of him squinting
pictures of him in a half-curse
jack’s jack daniels hat cocked sideways
his fat, red winedrunk face illuminated

it’s a status update, hashtag bonanza

jack says, if i wanted this kind of abuse
i could’ve gone home to drink

a few of us look at the glass of white wine
that he left behind for what seems like days now
then go back to singing summer wind

jack puts another dollar in the jukebox
it spits it back out
plays a song from its archives

as the telling pictures fade from the screen
and turn back into images of half-naked pop stars
puckering up for all of us saturday evening drunks

i don’t get it, jack says
i worked in computers for twenty-five years
but this….

my wife gets off of her stool to help him

last week in the liquor store
i paid for the rest of jack’s bottle of white
because he didn’t have enough change on him

when we see him on the street
we laugh and point and say, there goes good old jack

my wife gets the jukebox to work

a little grateful dead, jack says
sitting back down like a twenty-first century master

he takes a pull on his white
begins drumming on the bar

i can’t tell if it’s a jerry song or one sung by bob weir

but things are suddenly looking up
for us in here tonight

as the bartender sets two shot glasses in front of us
and says, the next round is on me.

the good times are killing me

by John Grochalski

we wait for seth to say
time for vodka shots?
as if that’s the question of the hour

three beers deep
a bottle or so of wine at home to be consumed

forty years old and for some reason
i keep hanging on to all of this

when i want so hard to stop and let go

the good times are killing me
and seth and you and everyone who’s always in here
the stomach burns and the sides hurt
only what the doctors don’t know won’t hurt ‘em

cheers, seth says
he’s not trying to be ironic but…

we take the shots down and he says,
man, all i want is my girl back

even though she cracked his face a few times
and left him knee deep in family misery

but abandonment makes the heart grow fonder
or so i’ve been told

and when seth picks up our pints
for round four on the house
there’s no point in stopping him
because we know where the real joy comes from

so i slouch off the stool
to put two more greenbacks in the juke

hear seth talking to you
the same sad story over and over again

his redundancy as brilliant as ours

the american dream in full bloom here
this lonely afternoon.                                          

nihil humanum a me alienum puto

by John Grochalski

this is a disney bar now
or it looks like one out of a disney movie

there are more televisions in the joint
then there are people

the people look like cartoons at last
blonde and tanned and without an ounce of fat

i don’t recognize the beers on tap
and the ones that i do are too rich for my blood

i can’t believe that i used to drink here
back when they broke the windows and the toilet never worked
and fights broke out as a matter of course on friday night

now there are fake fireplaces in the wall
and a beer garden out back

there is soccer playing on each and every television
and a digital jukebox playing pop on low

one of the blondes asks me what team i’m rooting for
and i respond, whatever teams ends this game the quickest

that ends the conversation

the chinese still come in here
hocking their bootleg dvds of the worst america
has to offer the world of cinematic art

back then the old guys used to pause from their drinks
to scan the movies and make conversation with the bootleggers

now no one says a thing to them
they watch soccer and have the bartender
pour them another expensive beer while they check their cell phones

more blonde and tan people shout from outside
because the beer garden has a television too

when the chinese bootlegger leaves
the three blondes drinking three red drinks with citrus fruit
all look at each other like they smelled a fart
the one says to the other two
oh my god, that’s like the third time
they’ve been in here today

like, get a life, one of the other ones says

they go back to watching the soccer match
almost two hours of dutch and costa rican men
running up and down the pitch and there’s still no score

they all look the same anyway, one of the blondes says

but who? i wonder are they talking about

the chinese
the sweating soccer players
themselves
or the rest of us.

plastic transcendence

by John Grochalski

walking suicides stumble down
new utrecht avenue
with summer school backpacks
smacking off of the back of their knees
these drug slouch kids
doing the visine twist
with their open, slobbering mouths
before nine o’clock in the morning
while every other teen is still in bed
having glorious sex balls of the mind
there is usually a pack of boys
and their one token girlfriend
who’s too loud for the time of day
they extoll the virtues of the weed
as they pass it around standing menacingly
in front of the homes of the foreign or old
these marijuana zombies laughing at the wind
getting stoned before the opening salvo
of remedial math or english
trying to duck the cops who roam these streets
in circles, like rabid dogs chasing after their own tails
sweet aromatic dullards of brooklyn
caught in the shade of their forever high school
who have yet to connect their failures with behavior
too young
too young to understand the ramifications
the ones who will be here all summer and the next
toke after toke after toke
before taking their show of shows into the autumn
up all the way through graduation
in a hail of magic
of plastic transcendence
making a lovely haze
of the fragile and coming future

notes on empathy and small kindnesseswith the liquor store clerk

by John Grochalski

he says, man,
you look like shit

kid, that’s why i come in here, i tell him

then i put the wine and whiskey up on the counter

how was work? he asks

three dozen kids screaming and destroying
and someone pissed all over the bathroom floor

i got it bad here too, he says
had to throw some drunk out for shitting himself

i’m on six days this week, i tell him

try doing seven

i’d murder someone with a dull knife

i want to, he says
bagging my bottles and taking my twenty
but what can you do?

we just can’t get it right, i tell him

and we seem like such smart guys, he says

we’re gods
only no one knows it yet

he gives me back fifty cents and i toss it in the tip jar

thanks, man, he says

the least i can do, i say

i take my bag
the kid has double bagged the booze for me
because last time i tripped and almost smashed everything

it means a lot to me that he remembered

economics lesson

by John Grochalski

leon got drunk in the corner of the bar
where he sat after serving pints all day
to republicans and racists

he was often with a broken arm
or a black eye
from getting beaten on or thrown off the bus

he said to me, tonight is our tete-e-tete
and then he had me put gershwin on the jukebox
to drown out the mets game

leon took out a piece of paper and started drawing
some complex economic design upon it

layers upon layers of circles
with numbers and figures scrawled in drunken chicken scratch

i didn’t know what to make of it
except that i’d never understand economics
beyond my frayed wallet

i just wanted to drink beer and listen to gershwin
forget the job that i’d come from
and had to go back to the next day

i wanted the mets to win
but they were down again
and some of the guys in the joint
were starting to get restless about it

the seat next to leon was the only one
available in that joint

because they’d all been through this economics lesson before

some of them men had threatened to kill leon
if he ever brought up economics again

so he stayed mute on the subject with them
and just served them their beer
as they yelled about hispanics and blacks

but i was still new to the joint and still docile
and wasn’t of their rowdy ilk

so they threw me to the wolf with his scratch pad and pen
his laptop and pint of bud

and they laughed at me as i sat there
the lone soul in barroom economics 101

with professor leon
getting more and more soused by the minute

scrawling like he was mozart on an alcoholic kick

the gershwin reaching a crescendo of horns and piano

lines and line of economic nonsense
that held no matter for me
being splattered upon the paper in mad pollock dabbles of ink

me thinking that because of leon
i’d been nursing the same beer for over an hour

telling myself that if he kept it up
that i was going home to drink

this bar be damned for once and for all

which made the best economic sense for me
that strange and fiscal night.

guinness

by John Grochalski

we were all eighteen years-old
just out of high school

we were going to the beach in delaware
to drink beer and fuck eighteen year-old girls
right out of their bikini bottoms

calvin was going to have his sister
buy us a case of guinness

so that we could celebrate being eighteen
by drinking good beer in delaware
and fucking eighteen year-old girls
in colby’s uncle’s trailer

when we left for the beach
calvin snuck the case of guinness in a gym bag
and slid it into colby’s trunk

while his mother lectured us boys about
drinking beer at the beach
and tried to warn us off of eighteen year-old girls

because calvin’s mother didn’t want a drunk for a son
or a grandkid before her fiftieth birthday

but none of us listened to her

we were too excited to get out of high school
too excited to get out of pittsburgh for the week
anxious for the beach and beer
and the firm bodies of eighteen year-old girls

when we got to the beach
colby flipped open his trunk and slid out the gym bag

we crowded around a table
and opened it like we were unveiling a treasure

it wasn’t a case of guinness
it was a case of genesee cream ale in dented cans

calvin, said his sister must’ve misheard him
still, we had a couple cans anyway
and celebrated being eighteen

it didn’t get any better for us at the beach
because most of the eighteen year-old girls were still in school

the beach was littered with older, sagging couples
college women who were out of our league

so we drove around delaware

we bought a used television set
and sat at colby’s uncle’s trailer drinking the genesee
and watching tv

that night i got a horrible pain in my testicles
it kept me up all night and into the morning

i laid on the couch watching tv
and thinking that i was going to die

when colby woke up he joked that maybe it was the shitty beer
that caused my pains

still, my old man had to drive five hours
from pittsburgh to delaware to pick me up

we hid the genesee back in calvin’s gym bag
which was a shame because the first thing my old man said
when he got to delaware was
i could sure use a beer

and he couldn’t even have one at home
because the pain in my testicles got so bad
we had to go straight to the emergency room

the doctor said that it could be a twisted vein
or a venereal disease

which made me think about
all of those eighteen year-old girls
i wouldn’t be fucking in colby’s uncle’s trailer

the beer i wouldn’t be drinking because i needed surgery

i was less picky about genesee versus guinness
while in a hospital gown
when i woke up from the surgery
my parents and the doctor told me
that the vein had been twisted
and that i’d lost a testicle

i’d still be able to have kids, the doctor said

while i wondered how’d explain having one nut
to an eighteen year-old girl
or one that was older

when calvin and colby came back from the beach
they visited me

colby said the week was pretty much a drag
calvin said they still had a few can of guinness left

genesee, colby reminded him

it was still good, calvin said

i told them that i’d had a hernia operation
instead of losing a testicle

because i didn’t know how to explain that shit
to two eighteen year-old guys

then we all talked about being out of high school
and being eighteen years-old
and how many eighteen year-old girls there were in pittsburgh
for us to try and fuck all summer

before colby went away to college

and calvin went and got a full-time job
for some trucking company located down
by a make-shift beach on the allegheny river

urine

by John Grochalsk

there’s urine on the
bathroom floor, she says

the cat did it, i say
have more wine and forget about it
it’ll dry

the cat shits on the floor
this was urine

all right, i say

you peed on the floor, she says

i didn’t pee on the floor
at least not intentionally, i say
i’m a victim of circumstance
being the only male in here

you always piss on the floor

always?

a lot, she says
you’re not careful when you go

you know you do a lot of things
in that bathroom too, i tell her

like what? she asks
but i can’t think of anything

i’m not trying to start a fight
i’m just asking you to be courteous, she says

i plead innocent, i tell her
as i pour us more wine

do you know what it’s like to step in piss?

yesterday i stepped in cat shit, i say
with my bare feet

then do you understand?
neither are exhilarating experiences

it’s gross, she says

for the sake of ending this conversation
i’ll do my best, i tell her

that’s all i’m asking, she says

then we sit there drinking wine
and watching a bad horror movie on the tv

i get up

where are you going? she asks

where do you think? i say

she nods
please be careful this time, she says

always from now on, my love
always.

glass

by John Grochalski

yesterday morning i woke up
and knocked my water glass on the bedroom floor

and it shattered all over the place

five in the morning
and i already had something to do

but this is symptomatic

two days ago i swept the kitchen
and there was glass underneath a cabinet

two long, thin shards from wine glasses
that i’d broken a month before

some nights
i’ll stumble through the apartment
and feel a little pinch in my foot

when i sit down to check it out
they’ll be blood and glass embedded in a toe

i’ll wonder where it came from this time

either a pint glass
or one of those pyrex dishes
that shattered when it fell off the sink

i break wine bottles
and beer bottle en route to various locations

i can’t begin to count the number of times
i’ve had to go back into the store to buy more booze
because i tripped and fell outside
leaving crimson or amber puddles in my wake

it’s like i’m cursed with glass
it’s not even a drunk thing

when i was a kid i ran through a glass window
and ended up in a cast with tendon damage that never healed

it’s all because of glass
that i have to lift my left leg when i walk

the day i got the cast off
i tripped and fell and sliced my finger on a shattered ash tray

i don’t like glass
hell, i don’t even like sand

but using plastic is like making a deal with the devil

my drinks taste funny
out of a plastic tumbler
and plastic is no fun when you throw it against a wall

so glass and i are stuck together
until science comes up with something better

i guess i’ll keep picking the shards out of my rough flesh
due to my stupidity

buying second bottles of wine
being extra careful when i shut the broken windows

and at night when i get up to piss
and my hallway glitters like diamonds in the moonlight

i’ll just pretend that i’m rich

instead of a fat klutz
who needs to watch his step.

communicating with the dead --for ally (because it was her idea)

by John Grochalski

atop a hill in green-wood
we found samuel morse’s grave
which overlooked a half-frozen pond

and before that boss william tweed
his whole family laid out in three tombs
that are some of the oldest here

you said that he was a bad man
and i answered, well, aren’t we all?

basquiat was a hard find
until he snuck up on us
and we saw that his grave was loaded with carved rocks
bus tickets
and a copy of faulkner’s the sound and the fury

but no paints

you laid down your last metro ticket from paris

and i gave jean-michel a pinecone that i’d found
and told all those cold bones to say no to drugs
which still isn’t funny in retrospect

but it was just us for the most part
save the workers digging new landscapes
and the green-wood patrol who slowed down
every time they passed us

peering out of the tinted glass in their warm cars
wondering what two people were doing
strolling around a cemetery in the january cold

it’s just like cops to have no sense of history
or romance

but otherwise it was so fantastic
like we were the last two people on the tip of long island

even loud manhattan loomed quietly in the distance
as if it knew better than to honk and blare its usual

while we stood over leonard bernstein’s final resting place
up on battle hill

gazing at that thunderous beast of a city
we’ve been calling home off and on for almost ten years now

that nearly incomprehensible row of metal and mortar
so infinite and magisterial
i always wonder when
it’ll finally feel like i’m not
seeing it all for the first time

you and i catching those last bits of silence together
before we headed toward those big, black gates of the cemetery
and back out into manic brooklyn

started talking basketball
and comics books again

while the rest of the busy and damned rushed by us
screaming and yelling into cell phones
racing for busses with their packs of crying children

going home for dinner
television and the bedroom

all of us trying so desperately to live out
these little, precious lives that we’ve been given

to their obvious
expected
and blessed ends.

beer drinker

by John Grochalski

the beer drinker turns away
finishes a bottle of bud at the bus stop
opens up another one
that he has hidden in a paper bag
but he’s not fooling anyone
he’s doing it more out of respect
for the other people waiting for the bus home
people not used to seeing men
drinking beer in strange places
people who wouldn’t understand the need
after eight hours of selling your time down the pipeline
people for whom this way of life
is just the expected, inevitable norm of human civilization
the ones who will never find another way
the beer drinker tips the new beer
pours a waterfall of gold into his mouth
his eyes are red with weariness and booze
his hands are thick and black with grease
his clothes are stained brown from dirt
to say he is the standard and the stereotype
of the fading blue collar ideal
would be an understatement
he’s the american hero incarnate
but still the people recoil and move away
clutching their bags and their briefcases
no one here wants to associate with the struggle
although politicians stake their claim on his type
every election cycle
they just want to read about guys like him on the nightly news
and shake their heads at the way the country is going
the beer drinker, he just wants another beer
and probably a day off
he pours himself another waterfall of missouri piss
then cracks the next bottle a little bolder this time
he lets the paper bag go sailing down stillwell avenue
as the good  ecological people huff and pull on their clothing
people who’ll never know a beer buzz at lunch
people who know no desperation
because it sits manifest like a rank cloud over everything
so thick it blinds their hunger and need
chokes them on their own conceit
before they ever see the natural
light of day.

you don’t know me

by John Grochalski

she snaps at me at the work desk
she says
you don’t know me
and i think that’s fine
i don’t want to know her as i don’t want to know most people
but it’s the way she says it
like she wanted me to know her but i never bothered
people are touchy this way
they expect you to take an active interest in them
many people do take an active interest
in one another
i see them out at bars and at restaurants
i see them at jobs nodding their heads
listening to maybe a third of what the other person is saying
before they open their mouths to speak
these people, they know each other
but me?
i’m not built like that
i’d rather keep it like strangers on a plane
i’d rather leave people alone
and not ask them so many questions
still, it’s kind of sudden and shocking to hear someone
spit that out at you
even though i probably deserve it
so angry and formal
so accusatory and pent-up
an acknowledgement that maybe you never cared
you don’t know me, she says again
then storms away
as if she hasn’t sat in that seat for three years
telling me all about her son and his fiancé
her husband and his job woes
how much she loves her god
her family coming over from russia
and building the american dream
her houses and cars
her pets and neighbors
her love of john lennon and brett farve
her prayers
her hopes and her dreams
and all of the holiday traditions that she’s passed down for years
you don’t know me, she said
fuck, i think
i probably know you better than i know myself.  

anti-social

by John Grochalski

back in the city of my youth
we drink beer
and he tells me how anti-social i am

it is not enough
to sit here and drink beer
rehash the old times

watch my brother’s legs shake
underneath the table
as we talk about his divorce

we have to discuss my lack of presence as well

i don’t understand this
i mean i think i do all right with people

i’m the only man in the room who’s still married
and i’ve got almost two hundred friends on facebook

some of whom i actually know

i’ll admit that sometimes
humanity just becomes too much for me
and i have to recede into myself
keep finding new and improved ways to disappear

but anti-social?

still he takes a pull on his beer
and tells me as such

he says he calls them as he sees them

only i can’t be mad at him
he’s been taking care of my brother
keeping him on the straight and narrow for a few months

while his divorce moves along
and i play the recluse up in brooklyn
instead of trying to be the good, supportive brother

with a resume like that
he can say what he wants to me
and i’ll sit there and take it

i’ll just smile back at him
nod and take a pull on my own beer

as the conversation turns toward
jobs and women

another old friend of ours

big billy bradley

who owns three liquor stores
has four kids and three ex-wives

a man who’s just too busy these days
to give anyone of us a phone call.

seth

by John Grochalski

seth is a good bartender
but seth always has problems

a man walks into a bar to forget his troubles
but seth likes to give you his on a silver platter

he stock line is, you know,
it’s usually the patrons telling the bartender their troubles
but today we’re going to try something different

and then he’ll tell you
about some uncle of his dying
or how he lost three friends to cancer

seth tells his sad stories as he cuts fruit for drinks
and takes beer orders

sometimes he makes you feel worse about your own shit
sometimes he makes you feel bad
for feeling so lowdown in the first place

especially since seth survived a gunshot shot wound
and you’ve never been pierced by a butter knife

i’ve witnessed seth cry more than
some old girlfriends of mine

he tells you how he wants to cry about it
and then he goes ahead and does the deed

of course, it’s a well-known fact
that he majored in drama in college

for some of us it’s the price we pay for the cheapest drink
on the block

others have found some way to ignore the drama

they put on stones songs
read books or the village voice
talk about their netflix queues to no one in particular

but i can’t seem to ignore the tears
or seth’s conversation
he seems like he really needs someone in this world
and since i walked into the bar
the fates must’ve deemed me the guy

so i sit there patiently and take sips on my draft
as seth tells me about the bartender who died
how his neighbor was almost raped
or his grandmother in a coma

i tell seth how goddamned cruel the world is
because it really is

that’s my stock line

a couple of times he’s held my hand
but it was only for comfort, i think

and when i get ready to leave the bar
i ask him how much for the beer

seth waves his hand
and says don’t worry about it, man

so i don’t

and when i walk out into the blinding sunlight
of the busy city
feeling a great weight lifted off of my karma

i’m happy to be alone
with all that patient noise and overwhelming heat.

galileo’s finger

by John Grochalski

watching
the two shithead americans
touch 18th century artifacts
in the galileo museum
then laugh when they get yelled at
by one of the docents
it’s hard to imagine a time
when intelligence
and artistic license ruled the earth
stranded here in florence
and tripping over every cobblestone along the way
i try to picture leonardo walking around
with math and science on his mind
or a young michelangelo
on his way to worship at
the basilica of santa croce
but i’m inundated with american boys
strolling down the street
wearing boxer shorts showing
the david’s cock on them
chanting and laughing
and making a spectacle of themselves
in that absolute american way
so it’s hard not to think of the these giants
as more ancient myth
than actual flesh and blood
but they must be real
or else the history books be damned
and all of this architecture and sculpture be for not
i like to think of these masters
in the florence of their day
donatello watching the sunset over the arno
dante sitting in his spot and brooding
galileo tinkering with telescopes
and seeing the moon for the first time
instead of dead and cut to pieces
by the catholic church
his middle finger and one tooth
left for posterity in a glass jar
for american girls to ewwwww at
before begging their mothers
to buy them a gelato and a leather handbag
from the san lorenzo market.

breakfast of champions

by John Grochalski

i turn to wake my wife up
before the alarm goes off

but she’s already awake

the cat is on the bed, crying for her food

we both pet her

my wife tells me that she has been up
off and on since three-thirty

so have i, i say

i think it’s odd that at moments over
the last few hours of this early morning
we’ve both been up and silent

is anything wrong? i ask

my wife turns and lays on my chest

she tells me that it’s nothing, really
she’s just worried about traveling and planes
about our vacation to italy not coming together

but then she’s honest
she tells me she’s worried about the drinking

we sit and drink all day every sunday, she says

wine, scotch, and more wine, i think
we drink and watch tv

but i say nothing
just nod in the dark

my stomach is sick, she says
mine too, i say

i feel fat and bloated
so do i

we both have to get an angle on this, i say
but we always say that
we’ve tried for years

only three drinks after work
but it becomes four or five or six

one bottle of wine each weekend night
but by then time we go to bed it’s two and then some

three or four or five beers at the bar

and if we have the day off?
then it’s the breakfast of champions

i don’t know what to do, i tell my wife
we need someone to come in here and play adult

we’ll cut back, she says
although i knew that was coming

right, i say

only have three drinks after work
and on weekends we’ll do one bottle of wine

take up jogging again

no beer
no bar

and if the urge hits us too early on sunday
then we’ll go for a walk

it’s a good plan, my wife says

then she gets off of my chest
she gets out of bed to start the day
as the cat keeps purring and meowing beside me

it is a good plan, i think

it must be

because we keep doing it over and over again
hoping that one day it’ll finally stick.

comic books and baseball cards

by John Grochalski

i look at pictures of nieces on laptops
count ten fingers and ten toes

hope that everything is okay in gotham city

see the images of old faces growing older
the lines of flesh more pronounced

their children going from knees to feet
from sound to sarcastic

think of taking a cursory spin around
old sector 2814 tonight
just to make sure everyone is doing fine

i’m comic books and baseball cards

a web-slinger, wolverine through the ages

i gauge myself on the gray in the temples
the slipped step
the aches and pains of existence
the time ticking just to get out of bed

then i ignore it all

slap down piles of rookies and inserts
and wonder if that’s enough to sustain me
the rest of this mortal life

book that trip to central city this summer
hope that doctor von doom
doesn’t work his evil mid-flight

beg for that diamond plated variation
on last year’s meta mvp

the autograph card
a piece of the uniform to run my calloused fingers over

do a voo doo spin over each pack of cards
chant the name of the player i really want

hulk smash if i don’t get it
see the parents turning white and bent
smell the wet dirt around the graves

see the generations handing it off one by one
to the next batch of us
like old immortals reaching for the sunset

but please not to me, folks

because i’m the fastest man in the world
and i can’t be caught

at least not like that

i’m the dark knight glowering in the rain
just waiting on the joker to strike

i have lasso of truth that i’m keeping hidden
from myself for as long as i can

a rare honus wagner behind thick glass

i’m superman, baby

i have a fortress of solitude
and a fear of that kind of kryptonite

collecting the years that keep passing me by
everything going in clear plastic for future use

well-preserved
just like brand new
stacks and stacks of days placed in a box

nothing changed

i’ve flown around this earth dozens of times
to try and get some of the others back

but even superman fails sometimes
gets tired of this hero business

hopes for something else

but damn, if it doesn’t look like
something shady is going down in metropolis tonight.

paddy cake

by John Grochalski

she talks like
st. patrick’s day

hates the English

pours pints riding shotgun
with her irish brogue

tells us about her life
just outside of cork

how she chased an
irishman to america
in search of that elusive dream
we’ve been selling since 1776

how she took up with a yank
how it all fell apart
after they had three kids

said she wants to go back
despite ireland’s troubles

has a house waiting for her
but her yank husband won’t go

doesn’t want him there anyway
but he won’t let her take the kids

and you know these
american laws, she says
throwing more beer in my pint

he’s threatened me anyway
has thrown a pitcher of water at me
in front of his own kids

the only thing i can do
is keep calling the cops

but you know the cops
they’re worse here than in Ireland

and when she walks away
to fetch someone another
jim beam on the rocks

my wife leans in and tells me
that our little paddy cake

is also the waitress
at the diner we both like

after, i sit there
finishing off the new draft
musing over this news

thinking what a shame

because i really liked their
egg white omelet

the one with the bacon
and cheddar cheese.

friday

by John Grochalski

hands stinking
of bug spray

countless cockroach deaths
on my conscience

head heavy with
the burning embers of the past

wallet emptying
for the guy poison
of misery, courage, and salvation

road kill faces talking
dead letter words
in suicide offices

cancer sun boiling my flesh

and the smirking calendar

has the audacity
to tell me that it’s friday

as if i haven’t
been waiting

for that lazy fucker
to come all goddamned week

and show me
a little bit of mercy