Since Way Back When
Way back in the last century
in 1992 when I was a mere 50
I slipped in between the clean
sheets of my bed and sighed:
Thank you, thank you. As I
always do, so grateful to not
be sleeping in the back seat
of my ’56 Pontiac on Mount
Ranier in ’64, or in the airport
lounge overnight in Puerto
Rico in 1974, or in the cheap
and rundown open-all-night
movie house on Skid Row in
Spokane in 1964, or in the dry
fountain in Washington Square
in 1959 when the buses would
wake us teenage Beats as they
drove through the arch to turn
around and go back uptown
on a Fifth Avenue that wasn’t
one way yet, or on an upper
concrete floor of a half built
office tower in San Francisco
when I was AWOL in the sum-
mer of ’62, or in a tough trans
woman’s bed in her loft in the
Philly of 1973 or in a cot or
bunk bed in the military in ’62
or 3 or 4, or wrapped in winter
coats and clothes huddled
around a tiny electric heater
with my two kids I was raising
on my own 'cause their mother
was in a coma that lasted six
years before she died and the
new landlord of the building in
not yet Tribeca the illegal-for-
living-in loft I was renting was
in had quintupled the rent I
refused to pay so was trying
to kick us out and had cut off
our heat to convince me to
leave and me and my kids
ended up on two different
friends foldout couches for
over six months in the Man-
hattan of 1980, or me on
another friend’s floor for
several weeks in the Santa
Monica of ’83, while my kids
stayed with my second wife
until I could get a place for
them and me, or yet another
friend’s floor in Iowa City in
the Fall of ’66, or in a patron’s
Brooklyn Heights apartment in
the Spring of ’66, or on side-
walks and park benches and
lawns, or subway seats back
in the 1950s when the fare was
a dime, or redeye flights and
trains, or passed out drunk or
high in the beds of strangers
in the DC and NYC of the 1970s
or on the floor of a farmhouse
in upstate New York in 1960
owned by the first black farmers
I’d ever met, or in a gray ’49
Chevy owned by a cohort of
black military buddies one of
whom was sleeping in it too
after we failed to find lodgings
that would accept us in the
segregated city of Atlanta in
1962, or in a jail cell or lock-
down barracks or beaches
or so much more to be
grateful for not sleeping in or
on that made me sigh that
Thank you, thank you that
time in 1992 when I was only
50 and the young ambitious
wannabe Hollywood player
who slipped in beside me
said, No wonder you never
became the big success
people predicted you’d be,
it’s 'cause you’re too easily
satisfied, like with just having
a bed of your own to sleep in.
And play in I may have added.
— Michael Lally
"Since Way Back When" is one of four new poems by Lally. Click here for the others, from Relegation Press. "Founded in 2012 by Dallas Hudgens, Relegation Books works to connect readers and writers on a smaller, more intimate scale, understanding that success isn't always measured by sales numbers."