George J. Searles

Geezer Wisdom

Hey, look. I’m half your size, twice as drunk, and three times your age.
So if push comes to shove and you kick my ass, nobody in this bar
will be at all surprised, or—more importantly—the least bit impressed.

But think about this: What if all goes down the other way around?
(Stranger things have happened.) Let’s say we go outside
behind the dumpster and you wind up lying on the ground.

You’ll be so totally bummed out, embarrassed, and disgraced
you’ll almost surely have to move to another town, really far away,
where nobody knows you, once the story gets around back here.

So take my advice, Kid: Shut up, sit down, and finish your beer.
Hey, I’ll buy you another one. What are you drinking?

 

George J. Searles teaches English and Latin at Mohawk Valley Community College (Utica NY) and has also taught creative writing on the upstate campus of Pratt Institute (Brooklyn) and graduate courses for The New School (NYC). Widely-published (literary criticism, journalism, textbooks, poetry), he is a former Carnegie Foundation “Professor of the Year” and is currently editor of Glimpse, a poetry annual. His collection Escape from Jersey City was recently published by Clare Songbirds.