Two Unpublished Authors
We stood at the end of the Pier
peering at the vast Atlantic
dawn still two hours away.
I said to Tunstill, “I can’t find Candy
everyday I see the same girls
on the stroll
but I never see her
and nobody knows a thing.
She never comes out anymore.”
Tunstill said, “You saved her
from a life of prostitution, Bernstein.”
“What do you mean by ‘saved’? ”
“Well, you have this long history of being
into these Ultimate things
Religious stuff
and you spent over a grand
on Candy so all that time
with her had to have an effect.”
“Perhaps. Who knows about
these subtle
mysterious interconnections.
Yes, I just may have put an end
to her career as a hooker
Maybe I’m like a spiritual catalyst.
I inspire others
like you, like Candy
although not myself.”
Tunstill said, “You finished The Triumph of Symbiosis
while I’m still working on my novel.”
“You’ll finish. Don’t worry.
“Can’t get a title.”
“I thought it was A Hebephrenic Man Tells All.”
“Changed it to Ruminations Concerning Inevitability.”
“Llike it.”
“Your mind’s still on Candy.”
I said to Tunstill,
“How about Burrowing into the Cliff’s Edge?
maybe The Blank Silence of Castration.”
Tunstill stared at me, then asked quiet seriously,
“What happens if we never get published? ”
“Meditate on the Almighty,
from dawn till the stars twinkle
in the Heavenly night,
thus shall you find liberation.”
“Talked that way to Candy? ”
“Yeah. She doted
on my every word.”
“You paid her! ”
“And I’d pay her again
if I could find her.
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poem by Charles Chaim Wax
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