Tag: writer

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

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©2023 Kevin Trent Boswell