Waiting at the Bar for the Game to Start. by Kevin Hoskinson

Talking tv head interviews

Springsteen about his book

when it just hits you:

You don’t like rock stars

admitting to depression in

these tabloid interviews.

So you elbow Phil, the guy

next to you: Look, he’s a star.

Have some pride.  Stand tall.

Stage-leapers tear at his clothes

while he dances in the dark.

Yeah, he’s the boss, all right,

knows people max out their cards

to pack and scream in his arenas--

what’s he depressed about?

You shake your head & curse

the success that’s gone to his.

You’d trade places. The mortgage,

 

you throw in, is late. Daughter

cuts her arms to feel something.

Wife swallows pills to feel nothing.

You glance at your unsigned tab,

order another double rye, neat,

& ask to change channels.

Kevin Hoskinson is a retired community college English professor who enjoys workshopping poems in area poetry writing groups. He has published poems in the Wayne Literary Review and the Edith Chase Great Lakes Symposium. He and his wife live in Berea, Ohio.