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.