Home » Poems » Keith Dovoric » Senile Party

Senile Party

(or, "Your Old Stomping Ground")

There’s a secretary that I know
whose husband recently died
But life somehow continues as before
She has to keep replicating the myth
that everything’s all right –
A savant of the copy machines
A mannequin in a megastore

There’s a child that I know
who goes to school with bruises
Just a shell of a thing bearing signs
of a nightly artillery attack
When did we start sending
our kids to the frontlines,
And when in the name of Christ
are we calling them back?

You just pretend
Things aren’t crazy
The bandleader’s not deaf
And the King is not a clown
So you defend
The last vestiges of confidence
And stick your flag in the last square
Of your old stomping ground

There’s a family that I know
they only speak in whispers
Afraid to raise their voices
for fear of an alcoholic’s rage
I wonder how they’ll fare
twenty years from now:
Will they ever rise up from their manacles
or their transparent cage?

And there’s a young man that I know
Has his whole life ahead of him
Still stuck on the diving board
over a pool of unemployment
Just wait a while, just wade awhile
Cling to your inflated promises
While you’re stuck in this limbo, might as well
Drown in your enjoyments

You just pretend

It’s getting late now
And the party’s letting out
The stragglers and the drunkards head
for another port of call.
Yet suspect the hosts, the powers that be,
in their senility, misplaced our keys
So we derelicts wander directionless
Like half-ghosts bumping into walls

But we just pretend…

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