I went for a long walk tonight
Among the mist and lamp light
Too cloudy of a night for a moon
Houses blasting their drunk tune
I met a man sitting on the staircase
Thought I startled him but he never moved his face
He wore a leather jacket and red shoes
A cup of coffee mixed with some booze
He had a sign hanging on his back
Hung in a way you
Knew it wasn’t supposed to be there
As I looked closer at the words on this plaque
I began to read a few-
“Tell me to grow out my hair”
Confused as I was because
This man was bald you see
But his beard was curly and ran long and free
Down his flannel shirt also red
What was going on in his head?
As the tunes from the parties died down
My ears and Brain making them not so loud
I realized this man was making his own song
He was whistling a story- carrying it along
His story went like this
He had lost a best friend at aged 15
And lost his left eye later at 16
He went to train to be a carpenter
But found out he was allergic to sawdust
By the time he wanted to marry he worked as a waiter
24, but far too old for a game of trust
As his story went on for a time
I noticed it began not to rhyme
He whistled a darker tune now
This old bard telling me how
He’d been let down one too many times
Tried to write but forgotten one too many lines
He once fell in love with a girl
Who told him to wait by a maple tree
she left and got dinner
With his best friend
While he planned out their day lying under the maple tree.
Another woman was in his life
This one he wouldn’t be fooled twice
The two girls were months in between
Surely a trick would be seen
But she took him just to play
Telling him she loved him
And taking it back the next day
More like this went on until
Old red shoes said “fuck it-
“All along i thought it wasn’t me
If I tried hard enough
Or changed this
Wore nice clothes
Or changed that
Surely my number would one day hit
“Yet here I am with a bunch of empty tickets
And every single one of those ‘busy’s’ and ‘mentors’ and fake laughs and made up scores
All the ‘plans’ and eyes kept away
The ignoring and ‘some other day’
They were all just ‘fuck you’s’
All in their own special way.”
Before I knew it the whistling had stopped
I was seated next to red shoes man plopped
On the stairs it beginning to rain
I gave him a cigarette but said nothing
We sat and smoked till away went the pain.
