“A Place Worse than Hell, A Feeing Worse than Death”
I caught myself writing-
“A place worse than hell, a feeling worse than death.”
Enough!
I am not tied up with ropes
I am not marooned
I am not forced to keep my insane Creole wife in the attic
Treasure does not sit in a place I can not enter
The spirit has not abandoned me yet
The angel might have cast me from the garden
but it is nothing personal
he does that to everybody
a little older by experience, perhaps
but by no means senile I have a cane
but I don’t need it to walk
only wave at park pigeons
and unruly children
And I try to behave
Lord knows
I try to curse the guests at weddings politely
and when I speak profanity to infants
I have the kindness to do it in a tone they hear as soothing
I am a little salty, perhaps
like a disenfranchised party member
a little too John Lennon after John Lennon was shot
imagining a world where no one got shot
or wishing instead that he had shot first
Orwell's donkey said it best, or better than I can
He said, "Donkeys live a long time."
The sobering details are as follows-
whatever love I am to experience in this middle period
must be understood as an act of shear will to live
(I will stop now, before I do something truly dreadful like quote T.S. Eliot)
scolding myself for being so dramatic
I don't mean to be dramatic
but there it is. . .
