![]() vitamins for shaky fingersA Poem by Philip Gaber![]() I was writing
carelessly, forgetting all I’d learned from “Elements of Style.” Wrote a short
story about thugs that were drunk on luck and home-made dandelion wine who had replaced their egos
with a statue of the Buddha that began: “I was
experiencing glandular swelling. Wore a
pompadour and a poncho in those
days. Very few people befriended me. Mighta
been cuz I was still sucking my thumb at the age of twenty-seven.” It wasn’t
Tolstoy, but at least I spelled everything
correctly. The critics
said it was schtick. I got carpal
tunnel from writing that f*****g story!
How could it be schtick? When my
girlfriend read it, she was sure I had based the female protagonist on her. “This woman
wears a caftan,” I said. “You don’t even
own a caftan.” The next day
there was a message from her on my answering machine: “You know how
essentially fragile my psyche is…it just doesn’t look good, it doesn’t feel
good. So anyway, experiment, explore, play the field, enjoy.” I was knocked
down, upset, unfastened. I shouldn’t
have stopped writing, but I did. Couldn’t find
my theme, my voice. My form
disconnected, my content deformed. I dropped to my
knees and started to dream. Somebody was
crying. Somebody else
was yelling. I was driving a
black Chevy Impala and no longer felt like an early spring flower. That’s when I
realized that it was called a Complex. In other words I was getting all crossed-up. That a vertical
line sometimes stands for continuous ecstatic love. A horizontal
line sometimes indicates a temporal process. And that it
takes an eternity to make me despair. © 2024 Philip Gaber |
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Added on July 26, 2024 Last Updated on July 26, 2024 Author![]() Philip GaberCharlotte, NCAboutI hate writing biographies. I was one of those kids who rode a banana seat bike and watched Saturday morning cartoons and Soul Train. But my mother would never buy any of those sugary cereals for us k.. more..Writing
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