Ground Floor and Below by R. Gerry Fabian

It always smells of someone
who has lost tomorrow
or else strongly scented cheap perfume.
Perhaps it is because I take the stairs
as a kind of morning punishment.
Still at 3:30 am
when the television finally renounces me,
it is a way to encounter
the human hazards like myself
who swallow their particular current drama
in the gray bird song neutral vapor
that is so often filled with bleak eyed
 “has beens” and “going to be’s”
all scrambled into foreign accents.

And when I return,
too twisted to concede,
too broken to ignore
and too alone to know the difference;
I decide on the elevator, push the button
and when the door opens,
you give me that first sly smile. 

About the Poet:

R. Gerry Fabian is a retired English instructor.  He has been publishing poetry since 1972 in various poetry magazines. He is the editor of Raw Dog Press. He has published two books of his poems, Parallels and Coming Out Of The Atlantic. His novels, Memphis Masquerade, Getting Lucky (The Story) and Seventh Sense are available at all ebook publishers including Amazon, Apple Books and Barnes and Noble. He is currently working on his fourth novel, Ghost Girl, scheduled for publication in 2020.