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| A Face of Despair Behind Rusty Lens |
“An old Brownie Box camera becomes
a mind's prison where memory fades”
I'm captive in a prison—
a Brownie Box camera—
old, rusty, silent.
It is locked but I cannot—
—or perhaps I don’t want to—
remember where I put the key.
Do I even have the key?
Some are new—who are they?
Many more are old—familiar.
Perhaps I too am a photograph
fading away on the wall.
The loud voices outside mock me.
Smug, self-satisfied fools
who make a virtue of ignorance.
Go away, I despise you.
My life:
I was born on a Tuesday,
the dreariest day of the week.
All my heroes—dead.
Leonard, Amy, Janis—all gone,
and spring died in March.
My beloved Judas kneels, contrite,
in the olive grove—
betrayal, his destiny.
I have no yardstick for happiness.
It does not concern me—
happiness is overrated
and it is the coffin of good art.
It took me years to understand
sunshine is more brutal than the rain.
I’m demented—
madness was God's savage gift to me.
I want nothing
I need no one,
no eulogies,
no heroic words.
Just say he was an oddball—
a poor poet whose poems no one read,
praying to a god who isn't there.
Is God
the greatest atheist of them all?
Master—
twist the knife a little deeper—
is the pain sweeter?
The end of the performance.
One last click—the shutter jams.
Darkness settles in.
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