THE PLOT THICKENS

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

It has come to my attention
as it does from time to time
that I'm much fonder of plot driven
narrative than characterization that goes
on and on and on and on and on and on
and in the end what are you left with
but the same pathetic slob you met in the beginning
in the same place in his life
only he's had some slight epiphany
or not
like all of the postmodern gunk
I used to wade through
hoping against hope
that SOMETHING would happen
anything
but in the end it just ends
and you're left feeling cheated
the way you feel
at the end of a love affair
cuz in the end that's just how it ends

up in the air

so why do we always want more than
what's possible
riding off into the sunset
everything neat and tidy
just give me something messy
The Big Bang will do fine
and I'll keep myself busy
picking up the pieces

Anyway here's what I made away with from my most
recent excursion to the public library's used book sale:

THE PARIS REVIEW BOOK OF HEARTBREAK,
MADNESS, SEX, LOVE, BETRAYAL, OUTSIDERS,
INTOXICATION, WAR, WHIMSY, HORRORS, 
GOD, DEATH, DINNER, BASEBALL, TRAVELS
THE ART OF WRITING, AND EVERYTHING ELSE
IN THE WORLD SINCE 1953 (and that is the title)

750 pages for a damn buck
cheap thrills
goddamn cheap
and there's Updike
Nabokov
Capote
William Burroughs
Ezra Pound
Ginsberg
Mailer
Hemingway
Henry Miller
and Stanley Elkin
whom I've always liked
just to name a few
and did you know that John Updike has a poem called
"Two Cunts In Paris"
oh
and I also picked up Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac Of The Dead
Stephen King's The Long Walk (lotta dead folks in there too)
and Ian McEwan's Saturday (which I finished on a Monday)
and God I swear that plot is so incidental to McEwan
(HE SPENT SEVENTEEN PAGES DESCRIBING A GAME OF SQUASH!)
but I waded through it anyway
I stuck with it cuz that's one of my flaws
giving the benefit of the doubt to
most anyone
till they prove me stupid

which most eventually do...

And I know I'm relinquishing
all claim to literary snobbishness
by telling you this
but I'll guarantee ya Scheherazade
kept things lively and moving
and just like that Persian king
I'm still here
after all this time
starry-eyed and hanging
on every word
with childlike wonder
(or naivete)
waiting to find out what comes next