probably nothing very kind. gratitude doesn't come easily to human beings. imagine everyone in town shouting, 'hey, we were going to heaven, or asleep, why didn't you let the sky fall, the rains come? even god would have destroyed us with a flourish and been happy. you had to keep the same old thing going.'
this is to console myself for not having rescued humankind, much as my mother expected it of me. yes, every poet a mama's boy, not necessarily in a bad way. it's just the bar set so high. you can't just write a few jingles for soda-pop ads, no, you have to write paradise lost or king lear. ordinary rhymes won't do, you have to invent a new language, honored by the nobel prize.
trouble is, actually, everybody wants to cure the ills that beset us. even the guy who sold me my new glasses, he's studying bio-tech in order to feed the masses and cure the aids epidemic in africa. how nice to be so young! he loves math and science. i basically flunked out of engineering at university. the first semester i played games, kissed girls on the bridge over the tracks with the train howling by below. second semester i dropped off to sleep after supper, rose at midnight, studied til six in the morning, and catnapped once again, all to no avail.
if i hadn't switched to literature, i'd be pounding nails somewhere or serving up drinks. come to think of it, i've never used that college degree, not for anything practical. and i've become pretty much convinced all the diplomas in the world can't match noah with his boat. yes, that man did it, why i almost stepped on a rattlesnake yesterday and did crush a few ants.
what in tarnation makes all of us feel the tsunami has to be stopped by our bare hands? was it that story of the boy who rescued holland from the sea by sticking his finger in a dike? if only it were that easy. i suspect you'd have to invent an anti-gravity machine to propel every last dog, child, and squirrel off the planet before it implodes. fat chance.
true, i continue to draw androids, hoping one will come alive and present us (me) with eternal life. www.pbase.com/wwp/android2 bringing the fountain of youth back from the future. yet, my true feelings revealed in this poem: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/angel it's the call of despair from the boy who cried wolf one too many times.
