take a bow
listening to madonna songs
of all things
which means that i’ve run out
of any and everything to do in this world
like last night how i told my wife
that life is boredom and that death didn’t scare me
which is one hell of a lie to tell
to the person you lay down with at night
and i wasn’t even on but one drink
a little too early for the dramatics of a sunday night
i wonder when i’ll stop this cold madness
stop inflicting such hurt
with little words, with little phrases of gloom
and the madonna keeps playing
as i walk past expired cars and grotesque homes
past old, bloated men playing golf
a song from twenty-two years ago comes on
that i remember bellowing through
the house of my ex-girlfriend
the night i came over to collect my shit
while another girl waited for me at a south side bar
such a low rent don juan i was
throwing my clothes, my books
the poetry manuscript that she hadn’t even read
into a big black garbage bag
all the ephemera of twenty-one months of wasted time
thinking how much better than her i’d been
how much better kept together i was in that final moment
as the ex kept pounding up the stairs
to replay the sappy madonna song
crying and crying and crying
as if it were the end of the world
instead of just getting rid of me
and it seems fitting that i should be subject to it now
still the source of someone’s pain
how discontent has followed me like some plague
i think maybe i should skip the little memory trip
shut the music off and listen
to the subway trains and the hustle of fruit stands
but there’s something soothing
in the song
in madonna’s voice
and the memories have given me
such a fine melancholia for this gray morning
not unlike being alone on the gray-green ocean
in the middle of a soft rain
and when madonna tells me to take a bow
i don’t even have to think
but spin and stop outside a closed down laundry
and dip low
almost to the crack concrete
enlightened like buddha
as if kissing the ground to be alive.
where the spirit shines
and my pride blocks out all the light
the cat howls
her death rattle in the morning
for two and a half hours
while i sculpt shitty fictions
and the sun boils outside
like a rotten egg
and now i have these kids
making a huge card for a politician
thanking him for whatever
we thank politicians for these days
and they are drawing
flags and moons and flowers and rockets
and more flags and smiley faces
writing god bless the u.s.a.
all over the thing
while i think about putting the cat down
and killing this novel for the third time
when out of nowhere
she shoves her cell phone in my face
and there is the politician looking back at me
smiling and magical and american
then she asks
her childlike smile as precious as a basket of puppies
why are you so ugly
when he’s so handsome?
and i have an answer for her somewhere
i swear i really do
somewhere deep down in me
where the spirit shines
and my pride blocks out all the light
and i’d say it
if only i could give myself
some cold, hard words
learn to speak the trifling language
of self-preservation
once again.
The Beatnik Cowboy 