The Guys Who Win Poem by Michael Philips

I’m for the guys who
Install super-charged V-8 engines
In old Volkswagen beetles
And beat out the muscle cars at the light
Winning while looking bad,
Winning while laughing silently
At the pointless contest.

But the guys I’m really for
Are the ones lying on couches
And unmade beds
With books that take them
On drag races up
To the cosmos dripping with
The calculus of infinity,
The guys who sit reading in the
Secluded seating areas
Bending the jail bars and escaping
Into the light of a bird’s eye view of all things,
The guys that can afford to laugh out loud
Because they have heard the best jokes in the world
And know that they are living proof of the punch lines.