BURNING DESIRE
You march to a drummer. You don’t know who the drummer is, only that you are not the drummer. The sound isn’t one you hear unless it’s inside your head, and then it sometimes never stops. Perhaps the ringing in my ear that began a few years ago accompanies the unseen drummer. I haven’t figured this out yet. All I know is that the ringing comes and goes. It too marches to its own drummer. But I’m getting away from the central thought entrenched in my brain. The words are just not coming. It’s as if they too were burned in my apartment fire, turned to ash, picked over in the rubble by firemen with hatchets and hoses. Left out in the street for the scavenger truck to pick up and discard at the city dump. In the meantime my vocabulary needs a tune-up and the old dictionary will not speak to me.
People keep writing and tell me that some good will come from this, but that’s like telling a grieving parent that the loss of their child was God’s will. Did Clark Kent feel better when he turned into Superman? I’m sure he did, but when he came down from the sky and changed clothes, he was still Clark Kent. Change can be good for you or it can be bad for you. Like there’s small change and spare change which has nothing to do with mental and physical change. It’s an abstract dilemia. I have already used up six minutes of my l5 minutes of fame when my song poem was performed three years ago at Tully Hall in New Yori City. Maybe I need to see a brain doctor. I could put myself on a list for a brain transplant if the procedure is perfected before I make the transition into the finality that awaits us all. For now, for the immediate, I fumble in my pockets and come out with enough loose change to buy a cup of coffee at Tully’s Coffee shop. Perhaps the young woman behind the counter will give me a change of heart.
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