I never expected to hear
anyone say

“Step away from that,
slowly; that’s
a grown man’s
pogo stick,
son;”

or

“Sixty years ago
married a big
fat fat fat fat fat
wife, we had
six kids
and I don’t recall
her name or any of
theirs;”

or

“I been robbed
five times, that’s why
when I get paid
I take all my money
and put it into
the liquor store;”

or

“Lover, the duration
of how good it feels
is directly proportional
to the heaviness of
the night in which
it’s happening.”

But I’ve heard them all
and even when
I didn’t understand,
I was glad to have heard
evidence of a wave among people
of heart and thought
and pain and quirk;

made me feel
there was a point
even if I was never to know that point;
a point

to living weirdly,
to have been in the right places
at the right times
to have heard such things.