4485. A MILLION KINDS OF SERVICE

A MILLION KINDS OF SERVICE

A million kinds of service and I get you :

the SST that will never land, the scripture

book that will never be read. The apartment

seeker's budget only calls for music in one

key  -  A-flat  -  let's call it. That's me.

Nothing you'd go seeking out, yet

something you'd easily settle for.

-

Now here I am, drinking tap water again;

it tastes like the gruel of a witch's own

soup  -  all that frog's head and leper's heel

stuff of legend. Whatever gobbledy-gook those

witches in Hamlet were sputtering, 'toil and trouble'

and the rest, be assured I can hear it now. Ringing

like a cancer bell, clanging like the mortuary door in

a hospital's alley. Where the decrepit ambulances

come, pulled by donkeys. But that's no matter; when

I die my friends will come looking and say 'yes,

yes, that was him for sure.'

-

I love it when others laugh  -  I see their charmed faces,

adorable in glee, spacious in their happiness. I really

do want to love everyone. How stupid is that, I wonder.