Thursday, March 31, 2005 | by nathan

STOP BROWBEATING ME! Here’s an update…

Hey everyone. I don’t have time for a long update. Suffice it to say the novel and my money issues are sapping all my strength. More the latter than the former but I’m trying to strike a balance. Here’s one of my recent lame attempts at poetry. Enjoy.

FULL CIRCLE

She sits down - “This coffee is wonderful!”
I smile like a person
who wants to be left alone -
My expression says,
“If you knew that I enjoy
having sex with men,
you’d stop talking to strangers.”
Her generation is not well-learned in such perils.

I tell her I don’t drink coffee -
It makes me jittery,
like small talk.

She sings a song to herself.
I name her Gloria.
She says, “I should be doing other things.”
“It’s good to relax every now and then,”
I tell her. “This might be the last
cold day of the year.”
She stands, still singing
waddles away.
The sales clerk comes in to stoke the fire.

Gloria’s butt is big and droopy
like mine will be, given time.
I wonder if anyone loves her.

had I engaged her, would I have been
subjected to photographs -
middle-class suburban grandchildren
fresh-faced and widely grinning?
Or would she have spent
her whole life here -
eighty years, the books her friends?

Was she plugged in the whole time
and is now losing her connection -
is her grandson on spring break
telling a girlfriend
to just relax - he’s got a condom?
Or is she feeling eighty and just now
just now
finding out she had this cord
this need
that Dostoyevsky and Maeve Binchy won’t fill?
Why did she talk to me?

Twenty-five and connected without plugging in.
Wireless generation.
I was taught better
than to plug in -
some outlets have faulty wiring. I watch the news.

Gloria and her droopy butt are gone.
The fire crackles.
On the last cold day of the year,
like a thousand miracles,
rays of sun
break through.