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Humphrey

February 4, 2012 By 1 Comment

Humphrey

 

I would fight for a woman

Like Patton with a .38 caliber pistol in World War II

Or a Spartan king.

I lie like this because of the questions you ask.

Don’t smile at me;

I might snort cocaine like Sigmund Freud

Or take quaaludes.

Tell me about your daughter’s debts

And your rotten, rotten job.

I will think sordidly while we eat chocolates,

And I will try to compose in my mind

A serious poem about the economy.

Then I’ll fend off dreams of the mortal sins

Which I was taught to confess in childhood.

We will watch “Miller’s Crossing,”

And we will watch reruns of the “Johnny Carson Show.”

I will not speak because I am not Humphrey Bogart.

In the end you will tell me to go,

And I will take my tattered coat

From the hook and leave.

Alone, I shall curse an inscrutable moon,

And I shall reach into my brown pockets

For some empty and crinkling packets of bonbons.

By 3:24 a.m. I will be home,

Thinking that today I should vacuum my apartment.

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About Tim Ruane

Tim Ruane is an artist and writer. He is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he studied English and art, and has worked as a chief copy editor in the editorial department of The Washington Post, where he has also worked as a freelance photographer. He has written hundreds of poems, two novels a number of short stories. His photographs have been published by The Washington Post, Simon & Schuster and The Good Men Project. He has shown his photographs at Potomac MD Public Library and is scheduled to be published in ShareArt LA, Circumfleks Magazine and Splinter Literary Journal. He will have an exhibition of his photographs in September at the offices of Prudential FedRealty in Washington D.C. Mr. Ruane lives and works in Garrett Park MD, just outside Washington D.C. USA.

Comments

  1. Thomas Davis says:
    February 6, 2012 at 3:13 am

    I will think sordidly while we eat chocolates,
    A great line in a poem with attitude. The ending leaves me thinking about how all of these thoughts somehow compress into the thought, at 3 a.m., that you should vacuum your apartment.
    Alone, I shall curse an inscrutable moon,

    Reply

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