ever notice how bad ideas make good stories
remember how you told your Mom that you'd
be right home after school but went trestling
instead with Johnny and Lawrence and you ran
like a fearful wind when the train caught up
and any one of you could've been funeral fodder

or like the time your brother swore that you
should go tell that girl how you really felt
and the red-faced humiliation that heated you
he and you laugh now and the story is great
but a small part of pride never forgets

remember how those two boys offered to take
you and Belinda and Mary Jo to the beach that
hot hot swimsuit summer day and you all jumped
into that old beat up station wagon, the blonde one
drove until the beer ran out and so did the road

recall the wind when you grunted over the rise
with full pack and half full canteen you thought
"join the army see the world" and that great
feeling of being so alive just seconds before
the sunlit flash blasted you into Walter Reed

Johnny said he knew a guy with a sure thing
but to keep quiet 'bout it 'cause...you know
and Johnny himself put up his house and
didn't even tell his wife...well ex-wife...
you shoulda listened to me back then man

we could be much worse considering everything
for the foolish things we contemplate and do
without thinking of all branches of the tree
of decisions that in twenty-twenty rear view
seem so obvious to prideful or mortal danger

in the end we reach some storied epilogue
rocking back-n-forth quietly now, just us,
you and me here, after the good laughs, and
good times, smiled tears running, why oh why
did it happen that way...i can't believe it

© agoodguy2have 2010-12-01