Yes, Ken, you've done it. And somehow I feel inspired rather than torn
asunder, my rather more constant feeling about our country's tragedy. Your
poem is raw pain in exquisite dress. Your pinball game image hit hardest,
as well as the poem's last two lines.
Judy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 12:47 PM
Subject: Ken/"The Pestilential Sonata"
> Really an experiment as well as a scream. I haven't tried to write with
> "connective tissue" in years and I have a feeling there are lots of torn
> ligaments and popped tendons around here. Flaws and all, I just need to
> dump the damned thing.
>
> Ken
>
> THE PESTILENTIAL SONATA
>
> "Hon, this is the South, cholera has always
> been a part of life here."--paraphrased from
> Wendy Taylor Carlisle
>
> Maybe it will be cholera after all,
> a Water Musick to accompany a shrouded gondola
> on the swill canal made in mockery
> of the peril-mocking city--
> a plague to scrub the parishes,
> double over the citizenry who cave,
> hit in the gut, but who shrugged,
> took their chances because they loved
> the benighted place they knew might kill them.
>
> They loved, and who are we to argue with Love?
>
> Maybe plague will come: bubonic, pneumonic,
> breeding among the rats that gnawed
> on the half-submerged In Loving Memories
> in neck-deep water and September heat.
>
> Go head, mes amis--let your imagination
> run to riot: that is why the city was made,
> for dream-trips through desire
> even if the outcome was surely cemeteries
> and the Elysian Fields.
> It seemed like a giant pinball game,
> its flashing lights now shorted out,
> knowing now only how to tilt,
> even perhaps to capsize.
>
> No one will have to say "Bring it on."
> Guests need no invitation beyond what
> we've already dispatched.
> No RSVP required, though it is courtesy
> to send a response.
> Screams are always appropriate
> even if they will be ours.
>
> KTW/9-9-05
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
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