Neal

there are people alive today
who found it on their first try

people who married their childhood sweetheart

people who somehow happened so early
upon the point of love
in this rotting haystack

can you imagine that kind of luck

the improbability of it is so striking
like finding air in a vacuum

I cannot believe it

but there are people
who insist that it is true

I wonder if those people ever felt
a day of disappointment
in their gracefully implausible lives

because I am dashing
headlong
into my fourth decade

and I have not found another soul
who was living their life
like it was a compassionate
bank robbery

and I had always thought that by now
I would have an accomplice

someone to shout
in a voice more musical than my own

EVERYBODY ON THE FLOOR, PLEASE
THIS WILL ONLY TAKE A SECOND

I wonder what kind of lives
those first-love people
must lead

simple
I suppose

lucky
certainly

I do not know

whatever the case
may be
I just know
that I am struggling
with a strange aching
loneliness
today

still
groping for
that
needle

 

 

I am ill with the music of my self
 and rum and beer
 and the stain of failure

while outside the river softly roars
 the wind sighs in the pines
 and the coyotes in the foothills
 call down the moon

inside an old refrigerator moans
 a mousetrap snaps
 and the radio whispers Spanish guitars

and I perk up my ears
 thinking that I hear again
 beneath the static
 the terrible laughter
 of the gods

yes, I am ill
 with the music of my self
 with the absence of love
 and the impossible justice
 of the cosmos
 as I sit in this dirty kitchen
 and scratch these nonsense lines
 trying my best to ignore
 the breaking of my
 starving
 gentle
 heart