I have this new room
I have this new room where I sit alone and it's much
like
all
the rooms of my past--old mail and papers, candy
wrappers, combs, magazines,
old newspapers and other accumulated trash is
scattered
about.
my disorder was never chosen, it just arrived and then
it
stayed.
there's never enough time to get things
right--there are always breakdowns, losses, the hard
mathematics of
confusion and
disarray.
we are harangued by these trivial tasks
and then there are those other days when it becomes
impossible even to pay a gas bill, to answer threats
from
the IRS or call the termite man.
I have this new room up here but my problem is the
same
as always: my
lifelong failure to live peacefully with either the
female or
the universe, it all gets so painful, all so raw with
self-
abuse,
attrition, re-
morse.
I have this new room up here but I've lived in similar
rooms in many
cities. now with the years shot suddenly away, I still
sit as
determined as ever,
feeling no different than I did in my youth.
the rooms always were--still are--best at night. the
yellow glow of
the electric light while thinking and writing. all
I've ever
needed
was a simple retreat from the galling nonsense of the
world.
I could always handle the worst if I was sometimes
allowed
the briefest respite from the nightmare,
and the gods, so far, have allowed me
that.
I have this new room up here and I sit alone in this
floating, smoky, crazy
space, I am content in this killing field, and my
friends,
the walls
embrace me anew.
my heart can't laugh but sometimes it smiles
in the yellow light: to have come this far to
sit alone
again
in this new room up here.
Writing
you begin to smile
all up and down
inside
as the words jump
from your fingers
and onto the keys
and it's like a
circus dream
your the clown, the lion tamer,
you’re the tiger,
you’re yourself
as
the words leap
through hoops of fire,
do triple somersaults
from trapeze to
trapeze, then
embrace the
Elephant Man
as
the poems keep coming,
one by one
they slip to
the floor,
it's going hot and good;
the hours rush past
and then
you’re finished,
move toward the bedroom,
throw yourself upon the bed
and sleep your righteous sleep
here on earth,
life is perfect at last.
poetry is what happens
when nothing else
can.
Human Nature
it has been going on for some time.
there is this young waitress where I get my coffee
at the racetrack.
"how are you doing today?" she asks.
"winning pretty good," I reply.
"you won yesterday, didn't you? she
asks.
"yes," I say, "and the day before."
I don't know exactly what it is but I
believe we must have incompatible
personalities. there is often a hostile
undertone to our conversations.
"you seem to be the only person
around here who keeps winning,"
she says, not looking at me,
not pleased.
"is that so?" I answer.
there is something very strange about all
this: whenever I do lose
she never seems to be
there.
perhaps it's her day off or sometimes she works
another counter?
she bets too and loses.
she always loses.
and even though we might have
incompatible personalities I am sorry for
her.
I decide the next time I see her
I will tell her that I am
losing.
so I do.
when she asks, "how are you doing?"
I say, "god, I don't understand it,
I'm losing. I can't hit anything, every horse
I bet runs last!"
"really?" she asks.
"really." I say.
it works.
she lowers her gaze
and here comes one of the largest smiles
I have ever seen, it damn near cracks
her face wide open.
I get my coffee, tip her well, walk
out to check the
toteboard.
if I died in a flaming crash on the freeway
she'd surely be happy for a week!
I take a sip of coffee.
what's this?
she's put in a large shot of cream!
she knows I like it black!
in her excitement,
she'd forgotten.
the bitch.
and that's what I get for lying.
Democracy
the problem, of course, isn't the Democratic system,
it's the
living parts which make up the Democratic System.
the next person you pass on the street,
multiply
him or
her by
3 or 4 or 30 or 40 million
and you will know
immediately
why things remain non-functional
for most of
us.
I wish I had a cure for the chess pieces
we call Humanity. . .
we've undergone any number of political
cures
and we all remain
foolish enough to hope
that the one on the way
NOW
will cure almost
everything.
fellow citizens.
the problem never was the Democratic
System, the problem is
you.
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copyright 2008 by Larry L. Dill