and it's 4:45 pm,
so I grab my ruck
and foot down to the river
with Daniel and the ghost of Vernon.
there, we intend to sink,
along with the sun,
which rode on our backs
from Florida up
to Manhattan
with a brief cemetery stop
in Park Slope, Brooklyn,
with wishes and hope
that I wouldn't run into her,
because that would've ruined
our way upstate.
it's always a gamble,
am I right, fellas?
they will answer when they read this poem,
which is spaced between movie trailers
and mixed up playlists of sorts.
and so we camp,
which we hate,
but we name hummingbirds
after gals we dated in the past,
and eat beans, draw on potatoes
and stab bananas with paper clips,
the stippling eventually forming
drawings of dicks and guns;
we feed those to the ex-girlfriend birds,
the fish and the bats.
we conduct writing exercises
and howl at the moon, waiting
for wolves or monsters to howl back,
but it only happens once,
which makes us sublimely happy.
we pass around a jug of whiskey
mixed with wishes,
taking slugs and reciting impromptu poems
about the state of things
and the things of state.
tomorrow's sunshine alarm clock,
will make us appreciate hangovers at home,
but we will also feel like a burro in a Kerouac book,
minding the river and the path,
better because we tried
and succeeded
to get away from it all,
even just for a night.
see ya the bar, after a shower,
we whisper as we walk.