Weeping Man

 
When passing through the lobby of a swanky hotel
the other day, I veered into the bathroom,
a swirl of marble, art deco tiles and brass fixtures,
and there I found a man weeping at the urinal,
fluid seeping from both his eyes and member.
He sweated profusely; the man was losing moisture
at an alarming rate, dehydration, I know the symptoms.
Get to the pool fast, I cried, and took care of my business.
Later, in the pool, a shimmering surface
of bikinied apparitions on rubber floats,
I found the man still weeping.
Such bounty, I cried, and yet still you weep.
I shot off the high board and dove into a vat of chlorine
and watched the weeping man trudge off to the locker room,
dripping wet . . . some of us are just damp all the time,
I marveled to one of the oiled beauties
who swam toward me like winged confection.
I thought of the man and couldn’t go on – I can’t,
I tried to explain to my now sullen consort,
twitch ecstatic in an unhappy world,
so the young woman splashed noisily away,
as I went in search of the leaking man
who had darkened my life. I would murder him.
I sleuthed, found his room number, took him by surprise,
except he wasn’t in, no suitcases, clothes, keys . . .
nothing. The room was sodden, saturated with tears
and who knows what secretions,
so I shook powder into the carpet, sponged the walls,
all to no avail, and I have never seen the wretch again
but imagine him weeping on railroad trestles,
on the ledges of skyscrapers, in boiler rooms,
in some dingy automobile with a rubber hose
connected to the muffler, in outer space.
I pray to cut out his heart, that afflicted organ,
for still he cringes in the corners of my eyes,
lodges in my ducts, taunts me with liquid sadness;
and now I am not above a tear or two myself,
if only to wash him away, watch him swirl down the drain
into the collective bilge of misery.