Sunday, April 05, 2009

Rodney Dangerfield

It’s like when you find out the movie star,
whom you thought was alive, is dead
no longer warming the dark space
inside their silhouette. That’s how it felt
the moment I realized it was not love,
but lust, that kept you waiting at my table
for the locks to consume my keys
thumbs thrumming the wood.

I think it was Rodney Dangerfield.
I was in the shower, I remember, or
I realized – quite a different story—
he wasn’t lying low, but lying down.
It gave me the creeps, like I had been seeing things...
an apparition of an “us” that never was.

Like the old man who sits on the park bench,
the one you laugh with every morning
waiting for the bus, until the day you learn
he died eleven years ago;
a heart attack on that very bench.
Very funny, you say, to the gum chewing bus driver.
But her glassy eyes don’t blink. She's kind
of looking at you funny. She asks,
Do you have exact change?
and so you press two silver dollars into the slot,
look over your shoulder, and take your seat.

It was a cruel trick, now that I realize
it was never love that kept you coming.

I come home at night to an empty house, reach for the remote,
find a comedy, and turn on all the lights.
Our ghost is still there, Haunting like an echo of laughter,
But the straight man was never in on this joke.

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