Humphrey

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.