After The Movie - Arisa White Prompt Home and Voices From Home

I really like this poem by Marie Howe. Her use of dialogue and place in this piece is masterful I feel. I keep trying to write a poem that accomplishes that, I haven't got it yet but here's my latest attempt.

After The Movie

(after Marie Howe’s After The Movie)

Fuck Ross, Michael says as we walk out the exit 

I can’t take any more of these films

We’re standing in Westdale under the burnt out marquis

the theatre is in sad repair, up for sale

Michael, I say, it wasn’t that bad and he says you’re just plain wrong, 

that was a god awful piece  of shit

You I say are far too critical,  a piece of shit perhaps but not on the god awful level

We start walking away towards the Snooty Fox 

across the street to grab a couple of pints

I haven’t been there since before Greg killed himself, remember looking in the window one stormy winter 

night, Greg there holding court,  I half expect him to be there tonight

Look Michael, that film is like anyone’s life, not great, not bad, just pretty mediocre

and really can anybody ask for more than that

Michael stops, looks at me and holds my elbow, Yes, he says, they can and 

fucking should

Michael, who is totally fucked up,  my friend who I’ve know for forty years., in and out of my life for all that time  

Look, I say, we’re doomed to mediocrity and here’s why,  we live in procrastination and never mind multi-tasking we mostly zero-task, but that’s okay, accept it, stop striving

I won’t he says,  success and happiness are tied together,  we can only get one by getting the other

By this time we’re seated in the bar., I order a Barking Squirrel and he does the same, we both take a sip,  it’s good and cold 

Michael says, Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre said Camus

I say, Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions said Flaubert 

We both sit there, the noise of the bar around us