For instance, right now, I’m begging for a piano, a guitar, a can and a stick, something to get the tonnage of this moment off my chest. Pen and paper? Last thing I’d go for while I still can’t breathe. She’s just called to say goodbye. She’s going back to her former lover. Did I say lover? We never even kissed.
I’ve just stared at several eternal minutes. If I was at the piano, a note, one sound would propel me through this dumb silence. Music: a telegram of sound.
Another pause while I remembered the flowers I’d left at her apartment today. Before I got the call.
You know what? I’d really rather write about matters that haven’t happened. This pen, for example: I’m sure it’s never wanted to leap off my desk and into service. If I were a pen, I’d want to lay low, unnoticed, and thereby get the most out of what amounts to a very short life.
If writing were the equivalent of a back rub, well, then, I suppose sheets of paper would line up in reams for their turn. But does anybody really think having ink swirls of pathos smeared all over your face and backside is a pleasure? Something to line up for?
Right now, I want to see this poem get up on its feet and walk to the phone. I think it’s ready for that kind of deliberate dénouement. At her earliest convenience my poem and she could start a conversation with prosaic possibilities: call it the naked truth.
Writers can avoid the subject, can’t they? But try writing an up-tempo, happy little ditty when you’re ripping chords and catgut out of your chest. If you succeed, I know a great psychiatrist you should probably use. That kind of dissociation should be medicated and watched round the clock.
A couple of days ago, I had butterflies in my stomach and the thought of her turned a heater on full blast in my chest. Here’s where I’d make my way swiftly to the bass notes, starting with a B flat minor. I don’t think, even at my age, hearts are ever accustomed to the swift knife-plunge of rejection on an answering machine.
Answering machines. Voice mail. If only there were. If only the machine had carefully listened to her tidy explanation of how she’d hoped I wouldn’t be hurt and told her what an outrageous hope that was. If only I could mail my voice to her while she’s lying next to what’s-his-name again and whisper, ever so quietly in her ear: schmuck!
