STUCK BETWEEN STATIONS
BY DAVID COLODNEY
After I’m dead, I’m sure my kids will curse me
for leaving the burden of sorting through my possessions,
scattered random papers, boxes and notebooks
shoved, pages bent, on shelves, ripped, yellowing.
Stacks of books in the closet, stealing space folded jeans
and sweaters should hold.
A man can accumulate a lot of worthlessness in his life.
I may as well sift through this now, revisit
my own history, place this stuff in its context, its time.
I find a spiral notebook and touch it like velvet,
twirling the ripped shreds embedded in those metal rings,
seeing my college girlfriend’s swirling penmanship
on paper thinner than my hair.
I can’t let the kids think they’re obligated to keep any of this.
I think of George Carlin’s routine about how all his shit was stuff
and all my stuff was shit.
It’s all shit to someone who didn’t live the back story,
days chronicled upon days until they become lives
driving in circles, pushing buttons on car radios,
drifting in the atmosphere
stuck between stations.
Gyroscope Review 16-4
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