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And Words Are All I Have
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Sadness has taught me a thousand times more in my life
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I’m due at the care and share thrift store
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where I volunteer twice a week,
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in this frozen outpost where
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outsiders are viewed suspiciously,
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and more people smoke than don’t,
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where politicians make speeches
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about the permanently unemployed,
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and the permanently unemployed
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make speeches about their exes,
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the weather, and the Young and the Restless.
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They carry the same slack-jawed look of disappointment
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I’ve seen in small towns all my life,
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as if they’d checked it off in a column somewhere.
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It’s in the way they speak to their children,
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the way they distrust happiness,
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brush the hair away from their faces,
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the way they wave goodbye.
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I keep a lookout for shoes for Helen,
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for her three kids under five.
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Pete needs a suit, he’s got a wedding in the city in June.
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Shy, sad Leonard wants a book on pirates.
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all the damaged trooping in like clockwork,
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resignation their calling card,
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something that will make a difference,
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News at 11 Warren Beatty will now be remembered as the old guy who screwed up at the Oscars. Forget his landmark films, his dangerous Clyde Barrow looks. That scene in Reds where he and Keaton reunite at the train station, The one that left you breathless: I saw it in a commercial the other day for Citibank. All of …
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