Stash The Liar

My best friend Stash
likes to say life around here
needs to be
"fiction-enhanced."

He couples that now and then
with talk about us being raised
"fact-poor."

The way he sees it,
his cock and ball conquest stories
and personal legends
about wild swings at bikers
are just due compensation
for having grown up
in gray houses
on sooty streets
in our dim little town. 

"If you’re gonna live,
you oughta live big.
If you never lived big,
at least claim you did."

Stash sucks down
the High Life
and fingers the label
he’s peeled from the bottle.

He’s been sitting here
for twenty years
and none of us believe
a word he says about
all the good times that happened

"this one time" in
"this bar I usedta hang out in,"

because we were here the whole time
and we could swear he’s never moved,
but sometimes we can feel the wind
from that mighty blow he laid on the Vandal’s chin,
and sometimes, our fleeting hookups
seem indeed to be the bucking frenzy
that Stash described again for us all
just last night. 

Stash lies to us.
We know he lies.
Bless him. 
Otherwise,
how could we ever
go on?