Thursday, December 11, 2014

poem of the day 12.11.14


killjoy

i try talking writing
with my part-time clerk

mostly because she overheard me
tell my other co-worker

that life has been miserable now
for six months

which is bullshit

i mean she didn’t overhear me
i said it out loud for her and everyone else to hear

maybe it’s not true
i really don’t know anymore

the way life is now
it has to be an aberration
and not the new normal

i don’t want this kid
thinking that i’m some kind of head case

another old man gone off the deep end
left to get old and rot in his lot in life

if she even considers me at all

she’s got a lot on her plate
just like we all do all the time

talking about writing is hard enough

sometimes it’s like talking about
another kind of cancer

and when my co-worker comes out
of the office and says to me

you know, you’re nothing but a killjoy

i try to take it in stride
because five minutes ago
some kid told me that i saved her life
just by renewing a book

i think it’s all relative to the person
exactly who you are to them at any moment

you can never really win

but still the comment cuts me pretty deep
to the core of what i’ve been feeling for so long now

i cut the literary talk with the young part-timer
when she says she prefers the editing over the craft

i disagree
because nothing in this world
beats that first thought

it’s the lingering over anything that’ll get you

but in the end opinions don’t matter much
over your own sense of truth

instead i think everything that’s happening to her is brand new
while everything that has happened to me
feels like a rerun or a dream

a remembrance of things past
like some perfect killjoy

i ask her if she’d like to go on her way home

her eyes light up and she nods
because we all really want to go home in the end

she touches her stomach
and says, i’m soooooooooooo hungry

and i think to say, you know
i used to feel a certain kind of hunger
at your age too

but i just walk away
lock a few doors

shut off a long row of lights.                                    

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