Whatever Is,

On that last Thursday, the one when it rained, a chap sitting next to me on a bench in the Park wiped a drop from the side of his nose and said to me from the corner of his eyes, “So long as kings still want to be poets, and generals, philosophers, I suppose we’re in no worse danger than any other ‘dime-a-dancer’ with arthritis.”  (Do many in your City still attribute melancholy to inclement weather?)

When things would get real heavy,
this one guy’s systems would all shut down,
and once he realized this he announced,
“Ain’t no damn body shuts down on me
‘less I say they can!”

First voice says,          
“Whatever is, can be appreciated for what it is.”

Its counterpart replied, “Si, and yet to an artist’s eye
a bad drawing is worse than no drawing at all.”

(And the first voice got all choked up.)

And the great cosmopolitan hero of an otherwise crude and cowardly people stood at the doorway and declared, “I go forth armed but with my steely sword and justice.”  And his mama said, “Well, you can go on with your ole steely self, but you leave little Justice at home.”  (A local expert later remarked that it gets “harder and harder to write decent history.”)

One guy, who for a very long time had tried to
“figure his life out,” finally just gave up, and his life said,
“Uhh, just speaking for myself, of course…uhh,
I for one am relieved.”

J.