Would not call this a "snap," would not call it much of anything but a
reaction, just had to get this out. Quality these days is irrelevant
when one can find words at all.
KW
EVEN IN A PRICKISH WORLD, NOT ALL ARROGANT PRICKS ARE GUARANTEED SURVIVAL
In reality, most of them don't Get Theirs: the karma thing
seems to exempt the thoroughgoing douchebags.
Most arrogant pricks prosper and die in bed.
They become capitalist icons--
Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Jack Welch:
sickening, yes, but life as it's played.
Yet note this anomaly:
I wrote the first lines of this
listening to the final trio from Der Rosenkavalier,
and I was crying hard
for one of the snottiest bastards I ever saw.
He had nothing to do with rose-bearing.
He had no time to renounce anything but his life.
Matty should have fit right in with the big guys,
a Zeus in the Pantheon of Assholedom.
He had the instincts--violence and drunkenness--
but none of the luck: the set-up horse who excites
the brood mare but then is stopped,
condemned to the torment of incompletion
so the prize stud can finish the job.
So tell me why I sobbed when I learned he'd hanged himself
in his parents' garage.
Twenty-two, four years out of high school
and he found nothing worth keeping.
Maybe I wept because I feared
he was a quick study and had a point.
Disaster is everywhere, the relief at any bridge,
overhead beam, or knife in the kitchen drawer.
There have been days when I have gazed
into the mirror like Snow White's stepmother
and the reflection said "Blow me" in reply.
I have heard the song but Matty learned the words.
My life is just the same as it was yesterday.
Maybe that's the point.
It's mine, we came together to the dance
and we'll go home together.
KTW/6-23-06
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Ken Wolman kenwolman.com rainermaria.typepad.com
"Don't be a baby, be a man. Sell out."--Lenny Bruce
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