My Mistake

a poem

This will end with

“This isn’t the Lone Palm

So my mistake.”

My mistake to think that a Manhattan

And a Kindle with Philip Roth

Would stave off the loneliness after a

Romantic comedy at the Alamo cinema next door.

I’ve admitted a thousand mistakes and just today.

For example I snarked, “Nice,”

At a guy who threw a pint of melted Haagen Daas in the gutter.

“It’s not mine,” he shouted

Again and again as I prayed the light would change.

“It not mine, it’s not mine.

I’m just cleaning it up from the sidewalk. They moved the can

That used to be here!” I finally apologized, hand to heart.

The lesson: don’t talk to strangers with chihuahuas on leashes.

And don’t fucking flip off gangsters in junkers

Who run red lights if you are on your bike.

They can outrun you and life is not a movie with a

High speed chase of a gangster in a junker pursuing a middle-aged

Fag on a bicycle through the back streets of the

Gentrified Mission. I hid behind some waiting white

People from Pacific Heights, praying, they were, praying

For a table at Flour and Water, as he yelled at me “pussy!”

I was one grateful pussy on my bike,

The one with a little piggie horn

And a basket for groceries.

My mistake for flipping off a gangster, for tsk-tsk’ing a litterer.

I wasn’t fucking born here. But I should know better.

I’m lonely, you’re lonely, she’s lonely, there behind the bar,

The bartendress who ignores me and misses everything:

Extra cherries, fresh napkin, glass of water, dinner order.

Boo hoo hoo poor me.

She can, at least, lip-synch Whitney Houston perfectly

Even though she’s about 25. Womb music?

Still, my mistake for thinking I deserved her attention

That old man (fag!) with a Kindle and expensive haircut.

30 minutes later vindication, (so haha her mistake!):

She checks out and I ask the new lady with savvy tattoos and tired eyes

If my order got put in, my chicken.

Turns out, NO! It had not! Lots of apologies

And free beer, and I feel the night turning my way!

This is not, however, the best thing that happened to me

At this bar, not the best thing by far.

In fact, the best thing is that all over town Aretha playlists

Are giving us good reason to cry, and a careful reader knows:

I love crying at a bar!

There’s nothing like a two-drink high and Aretha in the background,

Even more so now that she’s dead, regal fur thrower:

“And all through my coffee break time, I say a little prayer for you.”

This isn’t the Lone Palm, so my mistake for

Attempting this, but I feel better, damned if I do.