She Just Doesn't Care
My dogs fight in a box car of make believe children;
They nock them down like weather-beaten bowling pins;
What am I doing in this city,
With the river so near but not fearful; and yet the correct
English of this is appalling,
Like a fisherman unconcerned there is no bottom:
How will we get to the floor to sleep,
And looking at the phrases critically, as if you are supposed
To interview them for a job: They are paltry at best
They haven’t worked for ages, and who have they loved?
How many other words have they known laid down beside
Them to keep warm after some such and such midnight?
Their vocabulary is poor. Skin. Teeth. All poor; its diseases-
Not fit for mermaids, those topless dancers like selkies
Inciting barfights: And I’m sure I loved her: I sent her bouquets,
But why is the sky blue? The bad news can go on forever
And the fountain of youth is not real: All the conquistadors laid
To rest beside it are so old and unexciting, they put the tourists
Into a gummy eyed malaria; it is their disease. Cheap candles
Are more exciting, open wounds along the bromeliad,
The lizards who change colors along with the warts; and if the
Sea is weeping, it is because she has lost her billfold and that
Is why she goes back and forth sweeping across the middle-
Class lights of a moribund holocaust, sweeping as if though
Homely she might cradle inchoate beauty,
But she just doesn’t care.
poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
Added by Poetry Lover
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