he was in
a nursing home
memory unit.
the
last time
i was there he was in
wrinkled blue pajamas and a robe.
we sat
in the community room
and
the tv was on
and the place had that
smell of medicine, sweat and old age.
sitting there,
across from him,
trying to cheer him up,
i said:
my father-in-law
always used to say: don’t get old...
i guess
he liked that,
because he smiled,
looked down at the floor
and said (almost to himself):
i’m not old,
i’m just a young guy
something really bad happened to.
i worked
as a
bill collector once...
for
a week.
that’s
as long
as it lasted.
maybe
not even that long.
maybe
just a couple of days.
i just
couldn’t take
the sad, transparent
excuses made by people
who had even less than me...
and i
had nothing.
i already
knew their excuses
and
their lies.
i knew
that all they wanted
was for me to turn around
and get
off their porch
and leave them alone.
maybe
that’s why it
hardly even hurt
when i got pushed down a flight of stairs
by
some guy
in a red shirt
who couldn’t take
getting pushed around anymore
and
finally decided
to
just
push back.
he said
he
drove
eight hours
to hear me read.
i didn’t
know if that meant
4 hours each way, or 8 straight thru.
it
didn’t
matter much,
because he left
before it was over,
and
he never
bought a book, anyway.
John Yamrus - In a
career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has
published 35 books (29 volumes of poetry, 2 novels, 3 volumes of non-fiction
and a children’s book). He has also had more than 3,000 poems published in
magazines and anthologies around the world. A number of his books and poems are
taught in college and university courses. He is widely considered to be a
master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. His latest books are
TWENTY FOUR POEMS and SELECTED POEMS: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT. A second volume of
his poetry was just released in Europe, translated by Fadil Bajraj..
Really good stuff, especially like the last one
ReplyDelete