if you sing
“Sexual Healing”
late at the bowling alley
before they tear it
down for condo,
say the night it comes
down to my crowd
of content providers
and the professional
women’s basketball team
all of us singing past
midnight while the lanes
sweep and are darkened
pledging to each other
not to go breaking hearts
to survive, stay alive
and I in neon shuffleboard
become someone else
then someone else again
without breath
when will we
be blameless again
I sing “Wasted Days
and Wasted Nights,”
I like the torn and
restored soul that groans
I’d sing with you any song
any falling-out-of-speech
young singers are so good
at sorrow you’d think they
knew something about it.
from Poetry Northwest WEBMore by Ed Skoog from the library
Copyright © Ed Skoog
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.