Since Way Back When [by Michael Lally]

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.”