Poetry by Kevin Ridgeway

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What I've Learned So Far

i'm a weird guy
obsessed with so many random, 
beautiful quirky mind-bent things
i dig for and study endlessly
in a lonesome tower of a vicarious life
asking peculiar questions in class rooms
and getting funny looks for the way
I hold a fork in my trembling hand
and the nervous awkward silence
after she giggles at me in my
skivvies for the first time before
I belt out the words to The Greatest
American Hero and avoid
telling her that I'm a virgin
for another month of slippery
lies told with the shame of 
inexperience and useless
information.




Smile Until You're Alive Enough to Be Dead

we sit on a curb
where she tells me
she's sick of it all
and i think of how
many times i've
said that and tried
to kill myself
with the shit life
keeps throwing
at me with my
mother's death,
my father's third stage 
lung cancer,
my legal troubles,
being a stranger
to the rest of
my surviving 
family and being
trapped in a 
no where,
low income
world of
mental
patients
and my
sad racing
desperate
sleepless
thoughts
missing
out on all
the good
times
while i
look inside
windows
at five star
hot spots
where people
my age
smile
without
a care--
and i tell
her i'm sick
of it all enough
to keep living
in order to
find out if
i conquer
any of this
shit and be
another of
a thousand
hero's faces
who were
all sick of
it enough
to get up
from that
curb and fight
my way to
the other
side of that
window to
decide for
myself if
the joint 
has five-star
cuisine
or if the curb
is the place
to learn to smile 
without a care 
in this world as 
it slowly all
burns away.



BIO: Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Long Beach, CA. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Lummox, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Misfit Magazine and Cultural Weekly, among others. He is the author of seven chapbooks of poetry. The latest is A Ludicrous Split (co-authored alongside Gabriel Ricard) from Alien Buddha Press.