:: Satire ::

I fell and banged my shin and my flesh screamed with pain.

Dazed by the wind, only the wind; The leaves flying, plunge: you who have wilted by the wall, the twilight uncertainty of an animal―

(Poem by Allen Tate, what was the title now? Ode to the Confederate Dead, after World War II―I think.)

―'Jean, the budgets have to be done now.'―
―'How do you get this to them again?'―
―'Lunch with Mr. W. 12 p.m., Kuria, under your name.'―

(But then we speak prose of business necessity―not quite so pretty, and no need for imagination; business routines can stink like the carcass of a dead animal.)

Those midnight restitutions of the blood; you know―the immitigable pines, the smoky frieze Of the sky, the sudden call: you know the rage―

(Tate continues in my mind, his chapped verses charfe and sharp and broken. He mixes imagery beautifully. My shin throbs with cheerful obstinancy. Oh, the word shin―did you know did you know―shin is also the 22nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet? How artful, our language.)

I flip on excel―money in cells. How apt! We are formulas in our own prisons. I grinned inwardly at my childish satisfaction―I am a study of passion when it comes to my random philosophies. Pity passion doesn't pay.

―'This was designed to get customers to buy cars!'―
―'CPT prices...up by 250 percent...increase forecast!'―
―'Jean. Now.'―

(It's very distressing really; a turbulent wave of thoughts is weaving a crown of thorns on my head. Pain is a chorus, everyday now―the kidneys, sometimes; the afternoon migraines, the rumble of a chest pain, and yes, now, goddamned it, the throbbing of the shin too. Post-scriptum to self: but I like pain though. Never like a lightning flash of pain to remind you how useless this flesh, this form, really is. Why can't I be a cyborg? A metal sheet of robotic perfection.)

Dream Song 29! By John Berryman. Strange one, him. Bit of an Auden soul to his lines though, even if he is―was?―a macabre master of abrupt rhythm, and doesn't―didn't? ah fuck, whatever―write with Auden's poise. Graceful but grim. What was that line? "And there is another thing he has in mind / like a grave Sienese face a thousand years / would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of / Ghastly, with open eyes, he attends, blind." Do you know? He's writing about an axe murderer.

―'You didn't mark my English homework for me!'―
―'He's very upset you know. Talked abot you and how you're just going away...'―
―'Jean! Jean, that's your phone going off.'―

***

All relationships, when they die, should be buried in a proper grave.
Then when the time comes when you need to mourn for its passing―say, when the turn of time flips, in that inevitably polite fashion, to a date that once held so much significance to you (and you!), you could go and read a nice little poem (When You Are Old, an old Yeats favourite) to the ashes of a forgotten love.