INSOMNIAC SLIDES DOWN THE FUNNEL
(for Dorothy Parker, b. Long Branch, NJ, 1897)
By the 18th day mere depression is a wistful memory of Eden,
displaced by the cold outer planets of psychosis and violence.
By night you lay on the blue leather couch, weep at 3 AM,
bang your head into the bolster.
It doesn't help very much, not even a good headache,
so you put on TV and watch two sumo wrestlers fighting a warthog.
Proving nothing except some people are crazy,
but you knew that already.
Teach us to number our days and dull our nerve endings
so prayer may have answers instead of laughter: let us know
the sunburst of instant gratification instead of God the Retard
who plays with his toes and scratches his balls,
sitting in the corner like a Rottie digging for fleas.
Any answers that might come do so with speed
are therefore avoid the scrutiny of languid derision,
thus turnings toward rejection: rapeness is all.
Suffering in final rage, you become Carmen, the unisex hero/ine:
"Frappe-moi donc, ou laisse-moi passer!"
You would love to have someone do the job for you, wield the knife,
or shove you head into the oven--but stoves are so Sylvia anymore.
Gas-whiffing would run up a bill higher than anyone can pay.
Near dawn, spent and wept-out, there are maybe two hours
buried in the couch; you tell yourself "But it's quality time"
and start to cackle. Your awakening is not to morning prayers
but to an eternal curse aimed at the eternal O'Brien ,
your summons for the longed-for bullet to enter your brain,
your summons to end this mud-wallow because you are not a hippo
because you've lost the stones to swallow pills, to cut yourself,
or march into the sea, another Wall Street lemming.
"You should live so long" and fear you shall.
KTW/8-13-08
--
Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
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"I have been watching you; you were there, unconcerned perhaps, but with a strange distraught air of someone forever expecting a great misfortune, in sunlight, in a beautiful garden."--Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelleas et Melisande
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