Lock, stock, and two
smoking barrels where eyes
were once used.
Max is an ex-marine,
Desert Storm vintage and still
sleepless for days
at a stretch..
Kel's got two kids
by two different mothers and
he keeps coming to work
as though the police
cannot arrest him
for warrants related to child support
when the customers leave,
though only flirting
with twenty three.
Georgie's a bastard,
but so are we all,
in one way or another. I heard
his uncle owned fifteen dogs and
they all shit in the house
while he was away
in elementary school.
Around the office
they tip us off
as night stalkers. Owls
out and hard up
for a buck.
Mel's pushing
her mid forties and
Daunte simply pushes.
Chrystal comes in tired
every damn day and
who could blame her
with two kids of her own and
a mother half dead, but alive
enough to demand
constant monitoring
but nothing close
to the daily morning film review of
what we all got up to
on the overnight shift.
I am a bastard too,
by way of a Bible and
poor programming and shiftless
in sleep
for the weight of history and
the blows of time, and
enough neurosis to make some
pharma-chiatrist dream wet.
Some of us are
still young enough
to be boys, but by and large
we are men and women,
some too soon of age and
others too late
to do what we do.
Some of us remember
when the plot was a school and
some of us remember
21st birthdays and feel
the hangover still.
Some of us remember
second marriages and
nurse broken wings and
some of us remember
when every night off
was exactly that.
Sure, we are stock boys,
but boys we are not.
Grown up skewed and
screwed, at times much too soon,
to a head, the lot.
Stock boys we are,
but boys we are not.
