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THE UNWELCOME GUEST
The
Unwelcome Guest, arriving unbidden
treading cautiously on the well-polished floors
of the mighty and powerful
visibly ill-at-ease, expecting at any moment
the heavy hand of authority on his shoulder
and the hard stentorian voice in his ear
"Just where do you think you're going, mister?"
A fraud, a perpetrator, a transparent imposter
fooling no one, not even for a moment
flop sweat running down his face
his hand perpetually extended
for a handshake that never comes
Vast bureaucracies conspired against him.
Every official document pertaining to him
hopelessly misfiled, buried beneath yellowed stacks
of inter-office memos, outdated annual reports
old girlie magazines and half-eaten sandwiches.
His transport is always delayed.
His baggage invariably sent to the wrong destination.
There are always problems with his papers.
(The Desk Clerk looks up apologetically from her CRT:
"I'm sorry, sir…what was your name again?")
Even the simplest dinner reservation
an absolute lost cause.
The
Muse of History sold him down the river,
left him loitering in hotel lobbies and airport
lounges,
stood up again, while crowds of well-fed tourists
nervously try to avoid making eye contact with him.
He stares at them balefully, undeterred,
his gaze like rough dirty hands on milky white breasts
like a starving man who won't stop staring at your
food
while you're trying to eat,
staring with the slow-burning anger
of a man who has spent his entire life
surrounded by things he cannot have.
Fated always to be the bearer of bad news
come to tell you things you don't want to hear
cooling his heels in waiting rooms
while the boss practices his golf swing
and the receptionist files her nails.
The clock ticks.
The shadows lengthen.
At 5:45 he awakens with a start
and realizes he is alone
the office silent and dark.
The
security guard sighs heavily
as he unlocks the front door
"Guess you'll be back tomorrow, huh?
Some people never learn…"
THE TRANSFIXED MOTORCYCLIST
The
policeman spoke to him softly, discreetly
a single reproving word, and thereafter,
the man on the motorcycle
never moved again.
Even after the policeman had gone,
the man remained motionless at the intersection
as the light changed from red to amber
to green and back to red again,
his frozen hands gripping the handlebars
a look of slowly-dawning horror in his eyes.
The
seasons reversed, the clocks ran backwards,
summer disappeared into spring, spring faded into
winter,
and still the man on the motorcycle sat, transfixed,
a scream locked behind his clenched teeth,
waiting for someone to come and release him
from the policeman's malevolent spell.
The stock market crashed.
The neighborhood changed.
A rumor spread that the park
was no longer safe after dark.
Young urban professionals panicked and moved away
leaving abandoned bistros and burned-out co-ops.
The man on the motorcycle stayed rooted to the spot.
Shaved ice vendors returned from faraway exiles
to ply their trade once more along the avenue.
Old men played dominoes in the afternoon sun.
Lovers were separated by huge impersonal forces.
Sinners sinned and went unpunished.
Every now and then a band of grubby children
stops to stare at the unfortunate motorcyclist
still poised at the intersection.
Somewhere the policeman laughs fiendishly.
and the mayor sheds bitter tears
banished to a cold-water flat in a bad neighborhood in
Jersey City
his great works undone with a single ruinous word.
I want to leave this restaurant where I have been
sitting
and go out and ask the man on the motorcycle
exactly what it was the policeman said to him
but I am afraid, I'm much too afraid.
Erik Richmond,
a poet from Chicago, has made his home in NYC for the
past couple of years. |