Yes, Man

   Yes,
   you could say
I knew the man
We’d walked many
  miles
Not all at once

mind you
   in many pieces

   This particular piece
I met him at his truck

Full of miscellaneous parts
none good for nothing unless
you had the corresponding part
which was a good description of
our friendship.

   He needed ten dollars
   again
some short intricate enough story
that made the ten dollars
worth more than it was
               leverage
               they called it in those days
               I said, sure
               with a sense of doubling my money
               at least for his purposes.

               I pass him
               the ten dollars and
               remark, I could use that
               ten dollars, too
                  so he knew
                  it wasn’t frivolous change
                  in my pocket, so to speak.

   We approach a deserted
one story motel at
the end of the road
on a bluff
dusty sand everywhere
  the old sign half sunk into
  the ground.

I guess this is where he is living
or he has business
with the squatters     presumably
   inside
   since dust has been scuffed
   off     some objects
   concrete walls     at hip height
   now     good     for     perching
   not just     birds mind     you
   I     laugh     hesitantly,     not quite a

Natural laugh


He says to me

Don’t you still owe me 20?

with a crisp truthfulness

in his voice. He seemed
suddenly more alert than usual
or at least more focused on me.

20 dollars being one of the
most common exchanges of currency
besides the fiver of course
I said, yes,
almost as abruptly as
he asked.

Back in those days
given the overactive creativity of my mind
and the frequency with
which we exchanged bills
real or not
I pieced together in milliseconds
a believable
to me
unpaid debt to him
maybe I had paid it already
but since he was asking
it was easy to grab a
token of guilt
from the heavy backpack I always
carried then, ready at a moment’s
notice
to grab the guilt in any situation
and throw it there
so no one else had to
That was the kind of hero

I was
back then.

And this is how
he, I’ll call him John,
regularly got 10 dollars from me.

Somehow I thought I was
getting a break in the
deal
   to boot:

   He said he’d give me twenty
   back for the ten I just loaned
   him
   he was making such a good use
   of it
   after all

It sounded like
he was turning my ten     into (one)
   hundred
   so giving me twenty back
   was the least he could do
   for his trouble
   Then I could pay him my debt
   of twenty
      …so I just cut my debt in half

Thanks to his Brilliance!

I certainly had a twisted love
for this     man     in those days
A mix of respect, a lot of cigarette
ashes and wheelbarrows of
empty beer bottles
Never could keep up on the recycling
of.


17 September 2020, 7:42am