outside the building where i work,
the wind whips and wails
it raises holy hell in a way
that you just wouldn’t believe,
not unless you heard it for yourself
it moans and cries,
bawls, screeches, and shrieks,
as if this was the set of an old,
black and white movie
i shit you not, it got even louder,
louder than it’s been in hours,
just as i typed those last few lines
it’s as if the bad director
of this old, 1940s horror film
(or maybe it’s film noir)
was really hamming it up,
failing to understand the intrinsic value
of restraint and moderation;
not realizing that less is often more
if you’re caught out in it,
in all that wind,
it slices straight through you,
like a gangster’s switchblade
aside from the wind, it’s so
oddly quiet,
here, on the inside
that’s why the wind is so obvious,
there’s nothing
to compete with it
there’s only the sound of the heater,
and occasional fragments of conversation
but, that wind is so strong
and so ridiculously loud
because it’s coming
right in off the train tracks,
up a smooth hill with nothing on it,
and then, it smashes up against
the corner of this building
and that’s where i sit,
right near that corner
this wind, it produces
the caterwauling music of lonely banshees,
raging quietly o’er the moors,
weeping for lost loves,
ready to punish anyone
for their unconquerable sadness
i sit here and read my book of
dark, lonely poetry
i know the frustration of this poet,
i understand why he settled for
booze and prostitutes,
why he gave up on the idea of love,
altogether
i understand it, but
i don’t drink,
and the women i chased,
they didn’t charge
for their madness
they just scooped it out
from five-gallon buckets,
the way shark fishermen deal out chum
they served their love
on platters made of quicksilver,
adorned with rubies, emeralds,
bits of gravel, and chunks of broken glass
the whole soupy mess just
floated through their veins, and dripped out
from between their legs,
with that cosmic wine of ether and arsenic
on their breath
it slapped you in the face,
like that cold, december wind,
coming in off the train tracks
i hear that mournful banshee wind
and i know, that i too
will always be alone
not because i wasn’t
good enough
but, because
everyone these days
is just too broken
to know how to
love anyone
or to love themselves
instead, it’s
an unending parade
of impossible tasks
herculean shit-tests,
and promethean tortures
for imagined wrongdoings
it’s always,
“if you really loved me…
then, you’d endure
this bit of bullshit
and this one
and, a thousand more
just like them.
and, you’d thank me
for the privilege.”
it never stops,
the goddamned shit-testing
it just never stops coming
it’s just like
that goddamn wind
outside
always wailing
only,
more full of tragedy
more imbued with a primal rage
and, full of an
over-the-top
loneliness
the type of effluvial, melodramatic sadness
that pumps straight out of old
black and white movies,
dripping bombastic sentimentality
all over the celluloid
i would step outside,
shake my fists at the sky,
and yell, “stella!”
but, nobody’d hear it
and, they wouldn’t get the joke,
even if they did
people these days,
they don’t know shit about streetcars,
or any kind of desire
that isn’t a fleeting whim
their desires are all
easily forgotten
beneath the next,
pointless distraction
they wouldn’t know a maltese falcon,
if it fell on their heads
they can’t sit still for classic films
they can’t sit still in a dark theater
they can’t take the wailing cold
of the cutting wind
and, they certainly can’t stand
to be alone
the wind whips,
stinging like a shapeless jellyfish,
zapping you with a high voltage charge,
like a downed power line
it cuts,
like the edge of a
cheap gimmick
cuts
right thro
ugh you
cuts you right
in half
©2023 Kevin Trent Boswell
Kevin Trent Boswell 