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keep to the left
by Gabriel RicardI’ve been to seaside towns
where the girls are so dedicated to summer dresses
that they aren’t about to let a little thing like a blizzard
in June slow them down.
There’s something sickly,
mean-spirited about the way they pour
spiked tea down your throat and keep you dancing
until arthritis develops and cuts appear all over your face
like a magic trick.
I adore them all. I collect their three a.m. stories
with a slow-burn vengeance and always leave
with the same hat I showed up in.
Sometimes it’s just the hat,
and I have to tell my shrink father all kinds
of ridiculous things when I come through the front door
and find him with a rope, a chair and a note written
in his favorite imaginary romance language.
Love is strange. I think there’s a rockabilly song
that says it best. I hit my paramount when I’m one dollar short
of my Thursday dreams, and the collection plate is loaded
with singles covered in dirty limericks
and jewelry cursed by gypsy historians.
I’ve never been to known to pray,
but I don’t mind talking to someone who doesn’t know
how much I’m known to work out terrible songs in my sleep.
Those strangers are as frequent as extras who remember
how many takes it took for the star of the show
to get the death scene just right.
Every time they blew it,
those masks went up twenty years in value.
The fan club had to wear black to mourn
the passing of a performer who now needed
more than one cup of coffee to get through the grand finale.
A lot of books are available on the subject,
and I haven’t seen another living soul
at my local library for years.
I smoke in periodicals
and take a shower when the rain comes through
that huge hole in the ceiling I found in non-fiction.
My heart has gotten used to petty theft and spectacular loss.
My guilt-complex could run circles around a baseball field
a hundred times moments before they rip that sucker down.
I sometimes make bold plans
to drive far enough out of town to see if the world is flat
or just busier than ever.
That’s when I’m usually at ease
with being left alone.
04/02/2011 Posted on 04/02/2011
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Ava Blu on 04/02/11 at 01:24 PM this is fantastic |
| Posted by Clara Mae Gregory on 04/02/11 at 06:05 PM I like the way the creativiely descriptive stanzas create a depressive mood, leading up to the climax of relief: to be left alone. I can relate very well and find preference in "aloneness", just as this poem seems to imply. Good job. |
| Posted by Charlie Morgan on 04/03/11 at 02:49 AM ...what ava said: fantastic.
gabe, put this on top of the other tops. |
| Posted by Vikki Owens on 04/17/11 at 02:36 AM this almost reminds me of dylan thomas...i read a book of his love letters to various flings and women that he loved...the thing that stuck out to me and that i try to emulate as well was really seeing the complexities that make up the simplicities of life, if that make sense. and i realized that it was probably seeing all that made him so sad. ...well, that and alcoholsim. my opinion is because we see so many others living their lives of frenetic small details but our own seem to blur into one long boring drone. lacking real distiction...or so it seems from the inside. |
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