BROKEN INSIDE

There’s a poor soul sweating profusely,
Fidgeting in this cold chair next to me,
He’s filled with cocaine and booze,
Explaining how horrible it all is to me,
All he has done,
I feel like I am looking into a mirror
Of my past,
I tell the kid,
“Look, we’re not special, 
I’m just like you,
Broken inside, 
Filled with booze,
I have the same demons, 
I’m as dead inside,
I’m just an older,
More broken model,”
I tell him good luck,
Cuz your gonna need it, 
I’m no role model,
I’m no mystic seer,
No messiah,
I have no answers,
Just more questions. 

Robert Armstrong is a writer from the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. A former bookseller, he’s been published in a local magazine, Artless & Naked, and has been a voracious reader of poetry since age eight. Influenced by Bukowski, William Wantling, Randol Jarrell, Kim Addonizio, the Beats, and the Postmodernists, he is currently working on poetry chapbooks, short stories, and a fantasy novel.