poem of the day 01.14.14

bolero

tonight i am sick with wine

sick with family

my wife asks me what i want

i tell her devotion and adulation all the time

or nothing at all

or i want to cease, i say

i want to stop looking into the mirror

every morning

and have this fat, gray, unrecognizable

blob of a man stare back at me

i tell her that i want more wine instead

it’s then that bolero comes on the radio

its manic repetition building

until my wife and i are bobbing our heads

she tells me that she thinks

bolero should’ve been the song

they used at the end of battlestar galactica

the one that bound the cylons together

instead of the dylan song

when bolero comes on the radio

i always tell my wife about my favorite part

of that thomas bernhard novel

the part where all of the characters let go of their hate

to listen to bolero

as if something unexplainable and joyous

welled up inside all of them at once

but tonight i only tell her that

battlestar galactica was a really good show

instead of telling her about bernhard

or that i want that feeling of everlasting exuberance

or that she is still exciting

that existence is exciting when i let it be

and that this sadness

this sadness is only….

but then my wife asks me for more wine

and we sit there drinking in the silence between us

moving our heads to the music

until maurice ravel sees fit

to finally set us free.