Six Notebooks

Bob Stinson is dead
Still
As are many others
Such as Grant Hart
And a friend of mine named Bill
More everyday, more and more

One can read of Bob’s last days
Or Grant’s, or even Bill’s
If one can find that poem I wrote
It all comes down to
Maybe tomorrow, yes tomorrow
I can leave this stuff behind
Turns out
There isn’t always
One day more

One of my friends thought
Just giving up the Angel Dust
Would be like sobriety
It wasnt
So he experimented with
More quitting
Until he quit enough
To not yet be one of the dead

I thought of this in Speedway
Stopping to get a Diet A&W
Sugar being one of the things I quit
To see if living was better than dead

There was a young man there
Dancing, talking too loud
He had quit nothing
I left without the rootbeer
Conflict or death
Felt too near

But not being dead
Just quitting
Is not enough

I related this over coffee
To a young man
Experimenting with quitting
It’s not the quitting I said
The quitting I said is necessary
But not sufficient
The philosophy classes still pay dividends

No I said,
Gesturing up and out with my hands
Get into the living
Spreading my hands out
I said
Blossom, my friend,
Blossom
Like a flower

Then I laughed at myself
Which is something
The dead can’t do

PWS 2023.10.03