out of our minds and out of our league

feels good or at least not
like dying and
that's gotta count for something

end of the line of a family of
junkies and alkies and suicides, and
he remembers a teacher, 2nd or
3rd grade

smiles and the scent of lilacs and
she always told him that
everyone got to choose their own future

and maybe she even believed it

and forty years later he
keeps having the same dream, the
severed hands and the burning house

keeps waking up in a strange room
next to someone else's wife

and there is never any sound but
the sound of time running out