poem by david kimmel

I’ll never forget the time

That I convinced my mom that to study for a play

I had to stay over at Joel’s

Because there was just too much to memorize

On our own

By ourselves

I rode

My blue Vespa to his house

And we began to read the scripts that we typed on a Mac

On unpeeled white dot matrix paper

“The Phantom Tollbooth,” why did Joel choose this?

A story for 4th graders

We learned our lines in his room

And then walked downstairs and found some gin

Behind the wood cabinets

Below the TV

We laughed for a bit, made some prank calls

Over warm glasses of gin

“Is this The Church of Jesus Christ?”

“SCREW YOU!,”

It was funny at the time

We fell asleep, Joel in his bed

I lay on the carpet below

Only to wake up in the morning

With vomit next to my head

“COOPER!,” it must have been the cat

Joel wasn’t so sure

We rode my blue Vespa to school

Joel on the back

Hugging me like a lady

Before helmet laws, wind blowing in our

Hair above our soaked brains

Almost rear-ending a Porsche turning

Into the parking lot at

Torrey Pines

We walked on stage

And gave the performance of our lives

“The Phantom Tollbooth,” had been memorized.

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Happy Birthday, Joel.

I got a million more stories, with a million more to go.