The All American Dream

 

Color Riot 32,5 x 20,5 cm acrylic on raw linen canvas

“DON’T WORRY. IT’LL BE OVER BEFORE YOU KNOW IT.”

                                                                                                 

                                                                                         For Karin

We used to smoke weed on the roof at work.

Nobody wore hoodies, no hats, not

even when “scoring” in those pre-legal days.

No smart phones, Netflix, no hipsters.

Below us 80 or so bored co-workers willing

the clock to move faster. Young, all we wanted

to do was get high and make out, read important books,

say things we thought were smart. Each of us

was almost something else. I was almost a poet. You were

almost a painter. Our buddy Holt was almost Hemingway.

Mac who wasn’t a close friend but almost funny

said things like, “I’m as queer as a football

bat,” then let out a rebel yell. He was from Mississippi,

which explained his gift for metaphor. I was almost jealous.

There was another guy who when on the phone

always said, “my name’s Cap. Like baseball cap.”

And that was about it from Cap, except once on the roof

when I was holding forth on the Pointlessness of Life and an

earthquake hit. Cap was off in a corner eating his daily bagel.

The building shrugged its shoulders. Slowly. Cap appeared calm,

even a little bored, as if he’d been listening to

my peroration on existential dread. “Don’t worry,”

he commented in a deep, hollow, accidently cynical

voice, “it’ll be over before you know it.”