Tuesday, January 14, 2014

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.

                                    

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