Roger's Song

 Several years ago - I was in Paris for an extended stay, so that is probably why the mundane inspired an attempt at art.

I got an email from a long-term friend.

He was looking back while looking forward while cursing time and being, as always, an iconoclast.

I read it a couple of times (I had had a great day wandering Paris and I was three glasses of Corbieres into my evening, back at my apartment, and I was just spoiling for some reason to write about something).

The tone of the email, underneath the obvious, was a deep tone of melancholy.

I picked up the challenge and ran with it.

I decided to write a poem that I thought Bruce Springsteen would have written if he had gotten that email.

Here it is.

My family didn’t have too much

But we never really cared

America was always there for us

And most of us all shared

Just put a boat in the harbor then

We could always catch some perch

And laying off their skeletons

We’d take them to the church

Where Fridays after work was done

We’d fry the gathered catch

And pretend we all were rich folks then

As a kid that seemed the best

The best that life could ever be

The best of times so far

But darkness lurked all over us

Like being trapped inside a jar

A jar so full of smoke

That nothing could be seen

But nothing seemed enough for us

So we made the most of lean

Lean times, slim pickins was all we had

Clouded by that jar

The best that life could ever be

The best of times so far

I was different from most of them

I got a college rag

I got a job with IBM

Success was in the bag

But darkness lurked around me still

That jar now clear to see

That nothing was too great for me

So nothing would I be

I made a lot of money

And pissed it all away

Finally moved to somewhere warm

That’s where I am today

And thinking thoughts behind me

I finally may believe

That going back a lifetime

Is my last reprieve

Now I sit here wondrin’

Why I even care

Michael didn’t get me

And nothin’s really fair

My mind goes back at night time

To the fish out on the bay

That bay’s all filled with sand now

But why should I just stay

Stay here among the dying

The crippled and the dead

When packing up when dawn comes

All of this could be shed

And trek back to where I came from

Back up to the north

Back to where I came from

Back up in the north

Back to where the sandbar

That once had been the bay

Is now a metered parking lot

The perch all gone away

Still cold as hell in winter

With tons of winter snow 

No new business no hotels and nothin’

Nothin’ for to show

For all the time now long gone 

For all the smoke that’s cleared

And America still is there for us

So nothing should be feared

And trek back to where I came from

Back to where I still own

Some land that once was left to me

Two plots with each its stone

The graveyard plots of yesteryear

The prizes left me to win

Or prizes left me to own.