I have lost all vocabulary: THE REVENGE

Originally posted April 2009

I have lost all vocabulary.
I arrive upon a cartoon bugler’s herald
to a scene where with jesters hat jingling
my words seem mocking; they serve no purpose.
Emotional gravitas is thrown on a paperpile marked “for later.”
Then it is hidden, and later unbidden, in my
mind’s library where other books are flipped open erased and
I am left with a pen without ink.

******

Today

I am tired; a lot of bills have come in and my cheque book is feeling ravaged; I am even a little hungover, truth be told (although I ran into an old friend down the street this morning and made the same confession and got the reply Me Too! So that makes me feel a little better).

I watched Frost/Nixon last night, but am afraid to even speak about it, for speaking about it will naturally lead to my opinion of it

[disappointing]

and then – if I am to be a proper and faithful reviewer – I ought to substantiate that opinion with examples of deep thought and reflection. However the best I’ve got is that I doubt it could ever have reached the dramatic climax it was seeking to achieve, unlike other movies where the interviewer/interviewee go toe-to-toe, because it was based on fact, which I doubt is as easily scriptable as fiction. The more moving conversations took place away from the cameras, when Nixon calls Frost unexpectedly late one night, for example, or at their very last exchange at Nixon’s villa.

I also had another thought while watching it: since when has Sam Rockwell started to look like Gary Oldman? Or did he always and I just didn’t see it?

***

So, in sum: the poem is still relevant.