I had expected retirement
To be restful: a pleasant event
Solely selected by me:
No insinuations lingering
On the breath of others
Or water cooler smirks and snickers.
Nothing suggested or forced
No condescending tones
That whispered down the hallways
Until they fell out the windows
Onto Columbus Circle
Before the now-gone structure
Was razed beyond its skeleton
Torn to its very bowels.
Was the razing prescient???
I wondered again and again:
For I found instead ---
Fantasy perfection dashed ---
An enormous block
A block of dementia
Falling on my head
Soundless mayhem
Mayhem in the brain
Inside a landslide:
Ice-covered tectonic plates
Slipping on the magma
That had wrought them
And they in turn wrought back
With intense and endless
Churning of their hands.
Thus I wander around with the sound of
my vocabulary words -- round & about --
words that annoy so many others
And I tell myself their light is artificial
And their voices grandiose.
But still I am in the forest
With only my maddening brain.