Not Enough Gags

(On the morning of February 25, 1983, the great dramatist Tennessee Williams was found dead in a New York hotel suite. He had choked on the plastic cap of his eyedrops bottle, which he habitually held in his mouth when applying the eyedrops. The alcohol and pills he'd consumed suppressed his gag response. This poem is (we are asked to imagine) the last thing he wrote, a flurry of notes scribbled on hotel stationery.) Why don’t I just go out and meet some bum? for I confound hell in Elysium. Romantic anonymity, just like you’re lost out in the rain, Ciudad Juarez … No human thing disgusts me, if it’s not unkind, or violent. I feel good, now. I’m jacked up, and I’ve got my Seconal wind. Where are you, Merlo? I’ve spent too much time alone. We make decisions - is it will? Well, character is fate. (Those eye drops. Damn, where are they?) Walking out on Mom and Rose was something which, although it had to be, required a holy selfishness of me that was spectacular. The Rose Tattoo. The only thing I wanted was to love – was that too much to ask? Somebody’s Stella – Stella for star. We muse too much on cruelty. The pain’s no bane, so long as there is love. Who cares what people say, after you’re gone? I just wish I’d been lighter, funnier. Camino, Orpheus, Sweet Bird of Youth: they’re all so miserable – I’m not like that. I think I’ll do a comedy named “Playwrights Dead”. They always seem to go in silly ways! There’s Hasek, Aeschylus and Ottoway, and Orton, too. And Marlowe, most of all. I need an epigraph that’s frivolous, ironic, ludicrous, nonsensical. (Ah, found my drops.) In spite of all life’s dangers If “proud”’s allowed, two things above the crowd still clamor loud. I love the Texas Rangers, and casual kindness, meted out by strangers.