I am happy being alone.
—John Wieners
But this contentment gives way to
desperation only three stanzas later:
Won’t you come and see me again,
please?
Given the source, what else might you
expect: torn heart, tempting death, love
spilling everywhere, mangled, almost
lifeless body on the parquetry. How
does this compare to this October day,
during a San Francisco summer’s hottest
week of the year, in a one-room home
that’s never once experienced a cool breeze,
either coming or going, through it’s one
window? Six years now of toiling with
whatever trickery that might exist when
it comes to ventilation. As exhausted
as the burning mouth of a tailpipe, all
attempts to move tepid air as it sullenly
refuses to stir. Unless this lint-grayed once-
white Woozoo fan blows directly upon my
overripe, mostly unclothed person and the
double-fan that sole window’s pane closes
upon in as airtight a configuration as is
possible clings for a moment to a bit of a
breeze stirring in the courtyard behind it
and the door is splayed wide open to
expose the lower depths of the city’s
riff-raff crammed into similar rooms
in tepid states spewing their infernal-
eternal nonsense all hours of the day
and, especially, the night (as I do)—
only then this classless occupant might
but barely feel the movement of a
few breaths of warm air crawl, say,
upon and mostly over the tops of his
shoulders, or through the glistening
hair that covers his forearms. Happy
being alone would be a nice epilogue,
sure, would it not? Would it ever! But
no. I still, however, can’t shake my mind’s
aim toward tomorrow with a tinge of
what, I suppose, might best be called
optimism. So, in camaraderie with a man
whose shaking hand I once proudly clasped—
there is always that. As of yet, at least.
