Real Bells

Real Bells


Okay, things are tough. Just this morning
you pulled a rotting molar from your mouth,
your credit cards are long shut off
and some honest citizen called up
and had your van towed god knows where.

Even the AA meetings are getting stingy.
You could swear you’ve heard
that alimony story they tell a gazillion times,
only it was funny before, or something was.
Crappy luck that Michael’s in jail.

Wish you could ditch that jacket, huh? July
isn’t the weather for it, but at night it helps.
You can always use it for a pillow.
Once you too gave handouts to bums:
sorry fuckers, bonkers or heading there.

We’ve all got stories: the wife gone bad,
kids mangled in head-on collisions
with no insurance, not even casket money.
And that’s prior to peeing on ourselves.
But those can be shoved in a corner,

at least for awhile. What’s bad is the library
banning you because you smell. Folks complained.
Plus nobody on the street plays decent chess.
Worse still, churches don’t even ring real bells,
just recordings, like you won’t know the difference.

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