An Aging Bureaucrat Reviews an Arts Grant Application

Crossed T’s and dotted I’s
correct on all fronts.
Dropped off by a professorial caricature
with a belief in the naïve nature of chance.
Championing clichéd rants
about long dead revolutions
and new words
about the same perished thoughts.

Affirmative action guidelines perused
and in order.
Stop gap completions nurtured
beyond the tutorial limits
of something profound
from an ancient time.
Obtuse resume careening around,
a darkened perspective of nothing.

Once a visitor to Bulimia
in a bare and candid other life.
The toil and toll of misery
turned into cruelty
turned into recognition
and eventually into worthlessness,
line the stanzas from the old days
when there was a hint of something to say.

Today the hand is out with open palm
seeking redemption for the soul that died
in a disappointed past
with no one knowing or caring
save the aged ones
who sold out long ago
and seek to appease their consciences
with someone else’s money.

Matron

Past 75 now and pushing.
Another day, beginning to end,
replete with network TV to finish it off.
Still dresses stylishly.
Casual is a word she can’t spell.
Thank God for secretarial school
and a well thought out marriage.

They don’t know what to make of her these days,
where to put her in terms of what she was.
Few, if any, still live
who recall an abortion 60 years ago,
a trip to Richmond in secret
paid for by the old man
with the part-time job
and the couch in the back of the office.

They don’t even know what happened
30 years later when she had his brother-in-law
in another office
on a night when memory was blighted
and the loins of a widow were still ripe.

Rumors abounded without foundation
while she reached 50, then 60.
Her head held high,
her treachery, a secret thinly veiled.

She sits in church alone.
No more teenaged boys pressing hymnbooks
against their newfound groins.
No more married men imagining
the deft removal of clothing
while alone with their wives
and considering something new.

No one thinks of her in that way these days.
No one thinks of her at all.

Roll Another One

Cocteau bled Shylock’s blood.
It was done live one night on FM 96.7
just prior to a public service announcement,
a plea for donations in support of Bohemian Lent.

Allegedly, there was a documentary in progress
to be shown on consecutive evenings
along with a Gene Vincent retrospective
on regional educational television.

The event was marked
by massive demonstrations
in front of a chain of halfway houses
known as “Methadone City.”

They said language was dying,
but no one was aware.
It passed like a small rain cloud
or a trail of odorless cigar smoke.

They said words had become too accessible,
making their use in terms of art, blasé.
Symbols were the way of the new wave.
Like a middle finger pointed furiously at The Bible.