Jun 2020
Dear Grandfather clock,
with the pendulum broken and not swinging on the earth center,
I no longer care about clean poetics and colossal thunderheads.
Let the gloves be stained, I am much too drunken and wobblily with something unpleasant. A nimbostratus cloud, a cumulonimbus, vertical and towering, dark and soggy. I turn up the Frank Sinatra a little louder, singing and bellowing over seduction and kitchen knives. I pay extra attention to wah-wah romantic undertones, they’re celebratory. It’s not so funny when the stark original is bedridden. I want to bring you your dancing shoes, the sparkly slippers. I want to put a smile on your tired face. Bring a name to it. A thick, irremovable blue smile. You were young when she left. Weren’t you, you? Terminal patients get visited by loved ones, lost ones.
Yes, I was half expecting you to visit.
At the bed end. Smiling warmly.
I sometimes hope to see you both.
with the pendulum broken and not swinging on the earth center,
I no longer care about clean poetics and colossal thunderheads.
Let the gloves be stained, I am much too drunken and wobblily with something unpleasant. A nimbostratus cloud, a cumulonimbus, vertical and towering, dark and soggy. I turn up the Frank Sinatra a little louder, singing and bellowing over seduction and kitchen knives. I pay extra attention to wah-wah romantic undertones, they’re celebratory. It’s not so funny when the stark original is bedridden. I want to bring you your dancing shoes, the sparkly slippers. I want to put a smile on your tired face. Bring a name to it. A thick, irremovable blue smile. You were young when she left. Weren’t you, you? Terminal patients get visited by loved ones, lost ones.
Yes, I was half expecting you to visit.
At the bed end. Smiling warmly.
I sometimes hope to see you both.
