drama – three good words

March 15, 2015March 15, 2015

non, merci

subtle
the pressure works
like a boeing landing
closing in from all sides, invisible

that sense of
you should do something
be nice
give in
ah, the manipulation

but the mellowed drama is craftily sincere
played out in earnest
here i am, helpless
kind of
and i, me, the unworthy soul
am asking you
my queen
translate: you’re gorgeous, beautiful
see how i grovel before such majesty
to suffer my wounds
and heal me

always with that unspoken demand
to follow through
as if this were high romance
and ye the dying knight
carried back, a-wounded

only there are no wounds
no suffering beyond a pressing need
to do
well, yes
me
which is why i break the spell
with realism
and refuse

that’s barely a flesh wound
here’s a first aid kit
use it.

January 5, 2015January 11, 2015

before betty

Sitting snug, reading the classics
encore une fois Madame Bovary,
and her insufferable complacency
with the ridiculous romance of thin-paper novels.

And yet, I understand her need to be something else,
something more, to escape the quaint provincial life,
full of the foibles of the French bourgeoisie.

Sadly, you can see the end coming,
the flights of fancy building to catastrophe,
long before young Emma befuddles Monsieur Bovary.

Most disturbing however, is the gleeful sneering
of the narrator, peering
over my shoulder while reading,
a heartless voice, laughing with glee
at the – albeit predictable – calamity
that is poor Madame Bovary’s.

And yet I turn another page, if only
due to an understanding of her genuine suffering,
silly and selfish to narrator, parish and priest,
yet very real to poor Emma,
that feminine mystique resting darkly
in her desperate ennui.