West Side Laundry Mat

jboelhow

The walls are a pale piss yellow.
The floor is covered in a gray cracking tile.
I feel like an outcast in an outcasted building.
The people here aren't pretty;
women with big thighs covered with polyester,
wearing jackets with the local bar slogan.
Somehow they match the interior.
Not me,
I feel like some one better.
Yet,
here I come to make myself appear above this place.
Can't seem to break loose from the 75 cent life.
I spent my childhood on this same grey title.
Educated my mind from the old Reader's Digest,
that lay on the neon plastic chairs.
I remember falling in love for a few hours here.
One day a beautiful women walked in to dry some clothes.
She was tall and slender, with long clean hair.
She didn't fit here.
As she left I could see in her eyes
a consulting look.
It said "I was once here too".
Then she left.
It was then I knew,
someday I could leave this laundry mat.
I try everyday to leave.
I'm almost there.
Still, some nights, I find myself here,
washing my clothes
in the West Side Laundry Mat.

of_the_girl

i love your powerful imagery, stiking powerful images through words.

lovely. such a simple topic, yet a hopeful one..

"As she left I could see in her eyes
a consulting look.
It said "I was once here too".
Then she left.
It was then I knew,
someday I could leave this laundry mat."

Aha. The revelation.

jboelhow

Thank you, of_the_girl, for your words. I tried to describe the setting with out getting into too many cliches. Thanks again.

FinsburyParkCarrots

This reminds me a bit of mid-period Patrick Kavanagh, firstly in its realism, right down to memories of autodidacticism and aspiration juxtaposed against its present-day images of provinicial mundanity, routine and squallor; and secondly in its treatment as subject matter of the wish still to escape from intellectual and cultural poverty.

ISN

your 75 cent life is spectacular.....when you get out of it......you'll only remember it sometimes.....I hardly remember my 75 cent life at all.....

jboelhow

Thank you FinsburyParkCarrots, I know a little of Patrick Kavanagh. Studied him college (a few years back) in an Irish Lit class.
ISN - I do remember my 75 cent life, it's what drives me to be better in my life. I agree though that it was wonderful in its own way...