On That Same Hour Of The Night Poem by RIC BASTASA

on that same hour of the night
while you
were drinking your beer
alone
and taking big bites
of your beef steaks
and releasing
your stress
on some sticks of
imported cigarettes

on the other side of the table
too
sit two other friends
talking nonchalantly
like the sound systems of
the barrio

the wave their hands
shouting their names
telling me

that these times
they too know how to still enjoy
life and forget

and that i am always too far away from them
in my own kind
of indifference
in my own way
to disregarding
other people's selfishness

and they ask me if i have not forgotten them
their names the place of their origins
their true faces
and how the scars and violence have changed them
how they now learn
to look the other way around and bury themselves
in the small pleasures of smoke and alcohol
defining for once
what is despair