A Poem for a Cloudy Day

I don’t know why I have delayed doing anything with this particular poem; probably because it is more of a ramble without real focus and perhaps not a poem at all so much as a diary entry.  I have, frankly, reduced the text and broken this into two poems, one of which will appear in my upcoming poetry release, entitled Burn-Out;  however I still am attracted to the rambling original so, here it is.

A POEM FOR WEDNESDAY APRIL 13, 2022

It is sunny today, with Spring-like temperatures promised by the weather app.

It is nonetheless a day dripping pain of COVID, pain of war, pain of death of those we love and those loved by those we love.

It is a Velveeta Cheese day; fake and artificial in its feel, smelly in its aspect, cheese-y overall.

Seems Friday the 13^th could not await its turn, and marched two days ahead of itself.

I have spent the last week sending condolences to people whose dear ones have died from sundry causes at untimely times.

To each I have dutifully emailed my condolences, freed of the tyranny and pricing of Hallmark.

To each I have said “May your loved one’s memory be for a blessing.”

To each I have suggested that their personal task is to live, and to “remember tomorrow” today.

In each such missive I have hidden my own confusion, fear, distaste for the sun’s audacity, mocking the day of regret with the light of promise.

I detest at this very instant, as I write what is a screed disguised as a poem, Microsoft! How dare they capture my screen with an advertisement, requiring I click through, no convenient X in the corner to allow me discard them like the painful intrusion they are as I poet-ize my pain.

I mourn for so much for so many but for Microsoft I say: May I dance on your grave when the anti-trust people finally bury you….

A friend of mine, returned from Poland, is going back once he arranges a supply of drones. The Times runs constant pictures of dead people and children. Today, the back of a toddler on which a mother has written a name and birth date, in case the parents die and the child survives their escape.

I have stopped wishing people a Happy Holiday although both Easter and Passover approach; they reply that they will not have a happy time because of a recent death, crushing both of us.

I have stopped looking forward to each day, a violation of my own admonition that we must embrace the future.

Each future has the gestalt of the past.

We are returned from a wedding in New Orleans, a port city like so many with much dull desolation punctuated by pockets of money.

Bourbon Street, so famous I could not resist, a tinge of danger amidst music and alcohol pouring out of doorways, teenagers sipping Hurricanes on the street, Voodoo cigars, have your palm read, welcome to the unreal—no wonder these days it is so crowded you cannot turn around.

I follow a small parade of horns and clowns down the street. Who doesn’t love a parade? The song tells me there has to be clowns and yes, they are here….

I am throwing away the colored cards and memorabilia gathered on that trip. I am today angry at bright colors. I cannot un-recall my favorite T-shirt on offer: “Last night I got Bourbon-faced on Shit Street.”

I should not forget it, it is a statement of a solution.

I confess, it happened to me. I awoke 13 hours later holding a large bottle of Tequila I apparently purchased on my way back to the hotel.

I loved the hang-over, finally an apt sensation matching the world.

Flying home, looking out the window, I wrote poetry on the airplane. Somewhere over the nondescript landscape of a nondescript State somewhere between Bourbon Street and Boston, I wrote this:

It is Spring.

There is no snow.

Vegetable America blooming beneath me

Trees hearing our roar

Children looking up at the place of the sound

Not knowing that sound is memory and we have passed far onward in the sky.

They perceive as today what is simply history,

and think they are looking at life….