These Days By Michael Dwayne Smith

Where have my amigos gone?

I flash back to the intersection of

Eisenhower and The Haight,

where bartenders aren’t

Trumpers and all our girlfriends

smile while giving it away—

everyone living young and

dying young in a place where

brilliant fire still spits and waves.

We fixed up old Chevies and

hauled each other to house parties,

witnessed a baby-faced

Van Halen play a backyard

Pasadena kegger, where beer was

brotherhood and blood…

“Jimmy’s fucked up, but he’s

a good man,” a seminary student

explained while floating

on four-way window pane,

then he rolled us a joint with a page

torn from Revelations.

Never once did I doubt those days.

Now my amigos have pissed

off wives and fat kids in Q-shirts

who beg Santa for guns—

these guys are petrified, like any

move is a mistake and the way

home is one-way hole, six feet under.

I’m alive, and I prefer afternoon

light with local drunks in a Mojave

dive to any church or cult.

Never once will I doubt these days

Michael Dwayne Smith haunts many literary houses, including The Cortland Review, New World Writing, Third Wednesday, Gargoyle, Chiron Review, Monkeybicycle, and Heavy Feather Review. Author of four books, recipient of the Hinderaker Prize for poetry, the Polonsky Prize for fiction, and a multiple-time Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net nominee, he lives near a Mojave Desert ghost town with his family and rescued horses. His latest full-length collection hopes to go from apparition to publication in 2024.