Gray Day Theater
Late spring
and the opening gasps
of summer’s blazing promise
bring whirling dark clouds,
horizontal rain,
fierce weather,
warning horns,
my blackness,
horizontality,
downright mean melancholy,
and warning signs
worthy of attention.
I much prefer lazy storms
that I can listen to
at night in bed
after I’ve closed my book
(a defense mechanism
so that the day doesn’t end
and I’ll not have to live today
again tomorrow).
It’s neutral in that dark dark,
my ears fine-tuning my mood,
thunder a tympanic counterpoint
to the forgetting I know is coming
with the assistance of
my nightly psychotropic,
without which I don’t sleep,
without which I
descend into despair.
My familiar,
outside of me,
sits patiently
in the chair across the room,
legs crossed casually,
cigarette dangling from
the first two fingers of his left hand,
waiting for dawn,
knowing that the overcast
will return tomorrow,
and I’m his again.
During these shadowy times
my dreams are the old ones
of failure and inadequacy
of such intensity
that I force myself awake
to make them stop,
my pounding heart
and short shallow breaths
lingering.
Oddly though,
bright days don’t always bring
an equivalent measure
of pleasant dreams,
say, pastures of flowers,
faces I love,
chocolate,
tints of sweet colors.
Instead there is nothing,
and I wake knowing only that
while I slept
no psychic comedy played for me,
no balance or compensation offered
for the drama of gray day theater.
Copyright © Jack Jordan | Year Posted 2013
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