Joseph R. Blough
Swaggers into a bar
You could tell by his look and his sway
He’d better not go
Near the wheel of his car
Or he’d land in the pokey today
Bartender Zeke
Rolls his olive-hued eyes
And presents irritation and frown
“Don’t be so bleak,
Mister Doom in Disguise,
I’m one wounded Joe-Oe. Blough. Me down.
“So….
Untangle that Noodle, Young Man,
The one in your vagabond brain
You’ll be much less tense
And the traffic less dense
So unstrangle that Noodle to Sane.”
As if a Munchkin in her head
Had now unfurled a scroll,
She codified her morning dread
And how it wrenched her soul.
The list went on on on and on
From how the clouds occluded
The crescent moon and then the dawn,
To nursing breasts denuded,
Baristas getting orders wrong
For custom cappuccino
And tribute-band lines overlong
At this and that casino.
.
He nodded and tsktsked as she
Continued with her litany,
But when she moaned how there could be
Six ways you can spell Brittany,
He pulled a paper from his pants
And pen from his lapel
And wrote while she looked on askance.
She queried, “What the hell?”
.
He answered, “Dear heart, I’ve prepared
A document. Clairvoyance
Has helped to guide me where I’ve fared,
And now I chart Annoyance.
The thousand things that piss you off,
And spoil your disposition,
The thousand more that make you scoff
And fuel your indecision.”
She gaped. She sputtered. Melted down.
How dare he criticize?
He.listened to her with a frown
And fixed her with his eyes.
They stared across the clothed expanse
Of fancy bistro table
He signed the paper. One last glance;
He said, “Thus ends the fable.”
He rose and left. She watched as he
Paid off Anton their server
And strolled away, forever free
The better to unnerve her.
As for the document he left:
A front-load of WHEREASes
Preceded NOW, THEREFORE, and cleft
The doc with all those jazzes.
HE was annoyed, the doc declares
And not just by her sniping
Nor by her undisclosed affairs
Nor by her constant griping;
Nor by the secret bank account
Where she had funneled dollars
Nor for starch which by sheer amount
Abrasivized his collars.
No. His annoyance genesis
Stemmed not from what she did
But from the passion-barren kiss
Beneath the false-front lid.
He wished her well but not at the
Expense of future journeys.
For any other issues, she
Could contact his attorneys.
.
She shifted in her chair and stood,
And tucked his parting gift
Into her purse, and thought she would
Step out and call a Lyft.
No harm, no foul, she thought, beguiled.
May dread disease afflict him.
The cab pulled up. She brightly smiled.
So–who’ll be my next victim?
This is blog post #997.
In “come love me (part 1)” I alluded to variations. Over the last few days I have written fragments of where this poem might have gone, had the form or first line or sentiment been different. (See Arthur C. Clarke’s book The Lost Worlds of 2001 for some way mind-twisting variations on HIS story, including an alien named Clindar who strolled to a planet’s surface from above the atmosphere, and an earlier version of HAL 9000 named Athena, who was far wickeder than Hal, saying stuff like “All systems on Poole are No-Go. It is necessary to replace him with another unit.”) Here are some ways this thing could have gone:
come love me
“come love me” was the pixelated message
the lover stared until its afterimage
was seen mid-blink. its urgency, its pressage
presaged a tumbling intramural scrimmage.
*****
come love me
COME LOVE ME so beckoned in text
it left the recipient vexed
and so in reply
came HOW SCARY TO TRY
and the wonder of what would come next.
*****
come love me
“come love me,” said the pixelated text.
it pulled him with its offer of delight.
resistless, he typed, “yes,” for he was hexed . . .
*****
But in the end I went with the slightest of variations:
come love me
come love me said the blinking text
come play with fire come share my bed
we’ll doff our clothes and do what’s next
with no regrets and nothing said
come love me he replied at last
we’ll dine on scones & tea & such
our eyes will meet our souls hold fast
our hope will mix our psyches touch
come love me now & bring yr trust
her answer came ten minutes hence
we will be naked as we must
our lust become our sentiments
come love me if you dare he wrote
we’ll shed our bodies get our bliss
we need no flesh to cross the moat
nor lips to frame the perfect kiss
and hour passed
two hours
ten
the silence s t r e t c h e d and
too
despair
they sought a love
had never been
they wanted something
was
not
there
*****
Tragic that these two near-lovers could have gone both ways, with the tiniest leap of imagination, and pleased each other immensely on alternate days. But both were so fixated on getting things done a certain way that it became a battle of wills. I have found again and again that if a battle of wills, and not continual accommodation/compromise, sets the tone for a relationship, that relationship is doomed. I wrote all this to sort it out. I don’t really think that such a text exchange could take place, any more than I think it is natural for people to suddenly burst into song, as in anything that calls itself a Musical or an Opera. They are fables, and so is this; but a fable, such as this, is often a quest for a greater, or underlying, truth.
Let us now put the image in focus . . .
One with Clay, Image and Text 