They’re still alive today, of course,
which makes them kin to us.
Their final, faceless act is as yet
only a powerful idea, a yearning.
At the moment, they are standing
in the doorway of their childhood
bedrooms, counting the dusty books
on the flimsy shelves. They stop
at the gas station to buy one last
pack of Kools or Winstons.
The conscientious write checks
to their creditors; the others feed
their bills into paper shredders,
cackling a little at the unpayable debt.
By nightfall, they are huddled
beneath the bone-hooded moon,
trembling in the darkness, cursing
at the stars, or regretting them.
Tomorrow still seems an eternity
away, although it is creeping closer
by the minute, like a long shadow
rising from the pavement
as dawn subsides quietly
into the necessitude of day.
David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2010 Poet Laureate and is Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College. His poetry has appeared in many journals and in seven full-length collections, most recently Like a Soprano (Serving House, 2014), an episode-by-episode revisioning of The Sopranos television series. His textbook, Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017), its third edition.
More work by David Starkey
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