King of Spades - Johns
13 - Stream of consciousness prose poem
This Would Have Been Called:
'When I Bellow, You Bellow Back'
All I really want to do right now is eat pizza and watch baseball, which is a surefire sign that tonight I won't be doing justice to this very open-ended topic. Historically though, justice is rarely extended to johns. It wasn't to my son. John was my son for a brief time. These were in the days when I couldn't grow a proper beard and I shook with every step. "Softsword" John was my son in those days before I disowned him, before the whole production ended a week too late and I drank red wine with my wife in a Farrington apartment to the backdrop of "Oh, Canada!"...I am being vague, and I'm sorry for that, but poets are supposed to be vague, right? I'm sure that blowhard Robert Pinsky would agree. John Lennon agreed at one of his finest moments when he sang about Sir Walter Raleigh (on whom there'll be more written if it's in the cards) and I feel about as tired as my namesake right now; I've been staring at this blinking pointer in the middle of this sentence for over a minute...I want to be candid - that's something I need to work on - so I will be: right now, like good old John Lennon before me, I am miserable in my wakefulness. At this moment I am destitute in my exhaustion - my existence seems abject, but at least I'm self-aware. I know that said misery and said exhaustion are directly proportional - that this despair is external, transient. And I want you to know it too. If you are able to wade this far through my meanderence (it's a word if I want it to be) know this: Your desolation is not intrinsic. Your sadness is fleeting. All of you...I...I didn't know this years ago back when I was a father of three and I didn't sleep all night and with my bathroom door open I stared at my neckbeard face and at the dawn rising behind my head. Stranger's eyes were watching me: I didn't know who I was - was I a king or what? And I remember that morning because later someone told me that Elliott Smith had killed himself (for my dears we all know that he did in fact kill himself) but I didn't really feel bad even though I had idolized him for a time. Nor did allow myself to feel good when practicing a kiss with my mistress during that beloved production. At this moment I wonder why I didn't allow myself to enjoy that moment, but back then I had my reasons I guess. I was one step behind Amory Blaine back then: I didn't even know myself. Shaking, I opened my eyes while kissing her and looked behind her head and found myself staring into that same stranger's eyes...and here, now I'm tired enough to wonder if you're intending to look at me with those big old eyes of yours. Although I am lucid enough to stop my train of thought before it derails and crashes in the woods and settles as a home for a different type of John: all headless and derelict - those witnesses testifying to the light. I've run out of steam...
That last phrase alluding to John the Baptist wasn't supposed to be a throwaway at the end of a badly drawn metaphor. Sorry...This whole thing has been less of a stream and more of a sputter. I had high aspirations. I aimed in this to touch on the the problems of hereditary succession, the cruel duality facing both prostitutes and their customers...on A.A. Milne, an eighties sitcom, a Red Hot Chili Peppers song...I like to tell myself I would have woven all this together seamlessly if I had gotten more sleep last night. But even then, it would have been nothing but vagueness and pregnant words. I would have still just written about myself. This form has allowed me to do just that for the first time this whole project: write about myself. But fuck that masturbation, that self-aggrandizement so tied to poetry. No one really cares nor should they be expected to. Who am I - a king or what?
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