Franco has quit smoking five times.
I order a club soda.
The bartender holds the lime.
When Bushwick Blues
by Delta Spirit finally comes on,
everyone is gone
but my heart is full,
part nostalgia, part hope.
I get into a fight with a straw.
Feel youthful for a moment.
Look in the mirror behind the bar.
See a young me looking back.
I write a poem on a beverage napkin—
something stupid that I would have written twenty years ago,
when the world not making sense made sense—
and hand it to a fine gone gal on the Rumbler,
and hand it to a fine gone gal on the Rumbler,
just like I would've done in 2008.
I am a fool.
An aging vampire of the hipster generation.
Reliving things for the last time.
Not for long.