A Window on Perspective

A woman sings karaoke
while I sit and drink and contemplate.
I am invalidated and angry
(even using the word "invalidated" pisses me off),
happy and exhausted,
weary and resigned.
To my right,
I look out the window and watch as, out on Wilshire,
an old-looking middle-aged woman
pokes through the garbage can on the corner.
I bet on the baseball playoff game
tonight and won.
A parlay on three hockey games
would have won had I had the guts
to have made that bet.
I curse my cowardice
as, a half-moon hovering overhead,
I notice out the window
an old-looking middle-aged woman
poking through the garbage can on the corner.
Victory and elation,
disappointment and letdown,
all relative to the beholder,
smolder like incestuous hillbillies
on a Jerry Springer show,
baring all on syndicated television,
merely to cash that virulent paycheck while,
just outside the window beside which I am sitting,
an old-looking middle-aged woman
pokes through the garbage can on the corner.
Shame and embarrassment
steal over me for things
I have done or said,
ways I have acted or reacted,
situations I have caused or created.
I feel sorry for myself and think that
I am the unluckiest person on earth,
until I look out that window and see
an old-looking middle-aged woman
poking through the garbage can on the corner.
My wife sleeps at home
while I am in this bar,
sad, alone, near the breaking point,
while her cowardly, self-loathing husband
pines away, genuflective before a bottle
and this pen and paper,
attempting to discern his lot in life,
while outside, with no home and a sorry lot in life,
an old-looking middle-aged woman
pokes through the corner garbage can.



Santa Monica
19.10.99