I Wanted To Crawl In Between Those

Today Is The First Of August. It Is Hot, Steamy And Wet. It Is Raining. I Am Tempted To Write A Poem. But I Remember What It Said On One Rejection Slip: 'after A Heavy Rainfall, Poems Titled 'rain' Pour In From Across The Nation.

I Didn’t Want My Picture Taken Because I Was Going To Cry. I Didn’t Know Why I Was Going To Cry, But I Knew That If Anybody Spoke To Me Or Looked At Me Too Closely The Tears Would Fly Out Of My Eyes And The Sobs Would Fly Out Of My Throat And I’d Cry For A Week. I Could Feel The Tears Brimming And Sloshing In Me Like Water In A Glass That Is Unsteady And Too Full.

I Had Removed My Patent Leather Shoes After A While, For They Foundered Badly In The Sand. It Pleased Me To Think They Would Be Perched There On The Silver Log, Pointing Out To Sea, Like A Sort Of Soul-compass, After I Was Dead.

God, But Life Is Loneliness, Despite All The Opiates, Despite The Shrill Tinsel Gaiety Of "parties" With No Purpose, Despite The False Grinning Faces We All Wear. And When At Last You Find Someone To Whom You Feel You Can Pour Out Your Soul, You Stop In Shock At The Words You Utter - They Are So Rusty, So Ugly, So Meaningless And Feeble From Being Kept In The Small Cramped Dark Inside You So Long. Yes, There Is Joy, Fulfillment And Companionship - But The Loneliness Of The Soul In Its Appalling Self-consciousness Is Horrible And Overpowering.

You Are The One. Solid The Spaces Lean On, Envious. You Are The Baby In The Barn.