BIRTHDAY by Christian Wallace
Have you ever been to a party, a party
that was for you, you are the reason
for the party, and yet you seem
about the same as the crock-pot
of queso alone in the kitchen?
The guests grow glazy-eyed
off the beer you bought, the red
plastic cups in their hands and mud
caked to their shoes and now –
your carpet. One guy, you don’t
even know this guy, is fucking with
the stereo, playing some music he knows,
something ‘upbeat.’ It smells like weed
in the bathroom and, because someone
broke your favorite glass pipe, you find
a receipt-turned-poem rolled into a tube
and blackened where a butane lighter
licked the pot and paper. And in the
living room between the couch’s cushions
a cemetery for corn tortilla chips has
suddenly appeared beneath the asses
of slurring Don Juans and made-up
whores. This is your party, this is your party
and you don’t even know these
people, these people with no sense of
ownership or how to act. You wish
things were simpler: Batman tablecloths,
balloons and friends who sang
your name at the part of the song, happy birthday
happy birthday to you.
//ww
that was for you, you are the reason
for the party, and yet you seem
about the same as the crock-pot
of queso alone in the kitchen?
The guests grow glazy-eyed
off the beer you bought, the red
plastic cups in their hands and mud
caked to their shoes and now –
your carpet. One guy, you don’t
even know this guy, is fucking with
the stereo, playing some music he knows,
something ‘upbeat.’ It smells like weed
in the bathroom and, because someone
broke your favorite glass pipe, you find
a receipt-turned-poem rolled into a tube
and blackened where a butane lighter
licked the pot and paper. And in the
living room between the couch’s cushions
a cemetery for corn tortilla chips has
suddenly appeared beneath the asses
of slurring Don Juans and made-up
whores. This is your party, this is your party
and you don’t even know these
people, these people with no sense of
ownership or how to act. You wish
things were simpler: Batman tablecloths,
balloons and friends who sang
your name at the part of the song, happy birthday
happy birthday to you.
//ww