Primer Gray
By Thomas Keller

Smoke ring in a windstorm.
Old man with blindfold and cigarette.
At the university he showed promise,
was called a diamond in the rough
but the years got away from him.
He pissed away his time.
Now he waits for the phone to ring,
for Gabriel to call
and ask for his last request.

From the beginning
desire was a map without names,
never sure where he was
or where he was going.
Change made for the sake of change.
Point A to point B
in a car painted primer gray.
He drank too much
slept too much
read too much
chased easy too much
never finished the novel
he sporadically worked
for 17 years.

Now the Rambler sits on blocks,
the manuscript lost in the basement,
He calls himself "invisible man on a blue planet,"
the events of his life written in disappearing ink.
Nothing to offer as evidence
of having circled the sun.
Staring though kitchen window at winter sky
he chain smokes, sips hot tea,
waits for the angles to raise their rifles
and take him home.

Thomas Keller was born in 1955, in Ft. Worth, Texas. Currently he lives in California's Sierra Foothills where he began writing poetry in 1998. He is married, has 2 sons, occasionally hears vioces and has difficulty in remembering the sequence of past events. Tom enjoys discordant jazz, cheap cigars, professional basketball, and toasting the evening sunset from the sanctity of his wraparound porch.