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SPLEEN,
A Poem In Two Parts
I.
Ha! Aren’t you something!
You’re asking me to be your friend.
Forgive my lapse into the colloquial,
I lack another, another way to put it.
Where? Oh! Where do you get the nerve?
What unmitigated gall propels you,
When you have fallen far from the mark,
Lack common decency to comport yourself
Within any norm of self respect, or
Concern for the well being of any other,
Wanting impulse, regard for truth?
What are you, how nasty, how you have hurt me!
I curse the day,
The day my dream of love’s uplift turned to descent.
Have you no shame,
Pitiless you are! You know how much I love you,
I felt our souls were as one.
But your cruelty surfaced at the start.
Remember that May Day,
Our first real Holiday together,
Remember, our first full day together,
After your return from the homeland,
After we had not seen each other for seven months,
Not having seen each other for seven months.
I wish I could sincerely say
That I am fine and dandy with the me inside.
I wrote you all those letters,
I waited for you and worked hard to make
Your homecoming right, worked my ass off,
I found an apartment, moved furniture and belongings
Ran the business, wrote poetry….
You treated me like…, well I must,
Here I must resort to vulgarity, the vulgar,
You treated me like shit,
Were I simply able to look straight into the mirror,
Claim I am tickled pink.
Excuse me, if my manners make a scene.
You were skilled in your ways,
You started on the offensive.
Picky, picky, picky,
It must be a symptom, for it certainly
Points to the way you eat your meals,
Good God! At the end there were two,
We were reduced to two restaurants,
By the end of it we had two places where,
We might have something to eat.
And you played your hand skillfully,
Practiced as you were in the art, prevarication,
Playing me on for months on end,
Lie after lie and I never caught on, then.
You were shameless, hustled me for vittles.
The happy days, where are they?
Those days were few and seem so hard to find,
Whatever happened to our love,
You did tell me you loved me, or am I dreaming,
Were you playing me, was I the fool?
You did ask I await your return?
I thought it might be real nice,
I wish I understood,
Wasn’t it once so good?
Please, darling, please, might you notice
How much our affair revolved around food,
The eating of it and the gaining of weight,
I am still not over it, everything,
Your collecting recipes and filing them,
Assiduously clipped from cooking magazines,
To how you loved TV’s “The Biggest Loser”,
You once said pointing to some porky contestant,
“If I ever get like that, just shoot me.”
I believe I said I would happily comply.
And the drama was strange, strange indeed,
Once you went through the garbage,
-- By habit I always double bagged it. –
Then after your inspection, you complained,
You complained when you met me at work,
I had not cut the watermelon to the quick,
Too much fruit remained upon the rind.
Oh, my darling girl, sorry I displeased you,
Perhaps some day I’ll mend my profligate ways.
Junkie, tramp, liar, what a creep!
Plain, old, common, everyday nutriment,
Feed’s always an issue.
I figure the reason you can not behave proper,
You can not swallow your pride,
You can not finish your dinner.
Some one once wrote – perhaps John Dryden?
It was an historical figure nonetheless,
In noble minds some dregs remain,
Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain.
And when I objected, understand,
Had no desire to pick up every tab,
The extra super-market purchases
You were buying for your own room,
Nourishments you had no intention to share with me,
You pulled a fast one, tried a rationalization,
You bullshitted me about
How your father treats women,
Oh my God! Did I really need a lecture
About his generosity and free spending,
His financial chivalry when it came to the opposite sex?
(Reader, had you only been there for that recital,
She had full-of-herself smugness deep into her face.)
I had to stop you, and in a letter I reminded you
-- You had told me already --
How a court order was necessary,
Him to support his ex-wife, and kids,
Strength of character, epitomized, a stand-up guy,
No! It seems a lack of backbone.
Think, sweetie, you must have inherited it from Dad,
The fear, the fear of your mother,
Guess what? Fear is an enemy,
Though with the sick it frequently masquerades
As good counsel, pretends to be a friend.
Was our love a game and you set me up for loser?
Some situation, hey!
The situation, fear engendered,
One son and three daughters,
And no mention of the grandchildren,
Never mind possible grand daughters,
All of them alienated, they have nothing to do with you,
They never speak to him at all.
It is the kind of story that makes me happy,
Glad that he is not my Daddy,
Chivalrous indeed, what a crock of shit!
You, you had me pay for food, food
You ate alone in your hostel.
You cheat me, and yet you must know,
Know how great my love for you!
You offered me nothing in return,
Except the sad story, a sordid tale,
And not yet the real truth, that you would drop
Later, like the other, proverbial shoe,
The evil of your partaking, of a long-time affair
With a man who proved your alter ego,
Who proved it over the years
His love was equal to yours.
Both of you liars, what a lovely affair,
Match made in heaven, I am surprised,
Struck by the short duration, only five years,
When you two lovers seemed so well suited,
Sweetie, how do you do it? Remain absent
From his arms! You, poor child, I know you
Still love him, hanker for the mutual abuse,
Listen, Misses, where talk exists there’s desire,
Oh when Stanley’s standing by, my o’ my,
The dreadful things you must say about him,
That awful old boy friend and all his lying,
His constant running in debt to you,
Promises, but repayment absent,
And the way he with sex abused you,
But who knows, who knows what happened,
What’s really happening?
Wonder if you are in contact with him, again,
I mean your old lover,
Wouldn’t surprise me, when
Dealing with you one never hears the truth.
The stories, oh the stories!
Remember that date with Mora?
Out of the clear blue, you had to spend the night,
She was a long-time girlfriend, you said.
But I had never heard of her before,
I had to be reminded of the story of your meeting,
I don’t believe I ever heard of her again.
Mora who? I questioned. Let me meet her
Or tell me her last name. Ha!
You, you would never deign to answer.
Your response was silence, you’re haughty that way.
Learned at home when native in your native land,
The terror, the fundamental disquiet,
I guess few may imagine, how desperate your life,
How ill at ease, how you must bury it,
“Let’s spend the day shopping,” you say,
“Go searching from store to store
“There you see, you know me,”
“It’s what I am like anyway.”
A running dialogue you pathetically repeat
And convince no one, not even yourself.
Your home here in the states, your lessons,
You studied hard, gained Advanced Placement,
You told me you made "wait list" at Princeton,
Here’s the humor, were you not inducted,
A member, wasn’t it the National Honor Society?
But what you learned best was deception,
The past arises each time the telephone announces
Your mother, you lie to your mother.
And you, you’re a woman within the year,
The age of Jesus, Crucified,
Still you are unable to reveal truth to your mother!
It’s all laughable, were it not awful, terribly sad.
Is it my lot? Shall I continue to live in torment?
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