for Aaron Streelow
It’s when you get the blues so damn bad that
every song you listen to, no matter the beat
or the groove or the tune or what it’s about, even,
is still, somehow, then and there, the saddest,
most sorrowful and lonesome song you’ve ever heard,
and you catch yourself sniffling and watering-up
a little and thinking about your own weathered
steamer trunk full of troubles and woes,
and there’s probably nothing you can do to turn this
increasingly whiskey-fueled ship around tonight,
so you just better ride it out and hope you don’t start
listing too close to the jagged rocks of morbid
contemplation of one’s own mortality and the,
no doubt, tragic and lonely demise that waits for you
and whether or not who, if anybody, would even
remember or care enough to show up to the
goddamn funeral, anyway, so maybe it would
just be best if they put you in a pine box and
a shallow grave in a potter’s field, somewhere
outside of town, with a number instead of a name,
a grave that no one will ever think to visit or keep clean.
Yeah, those kind of blues.
