lament
WWe could never make it to the Fall. The Halloween Express will not give any gifts this year, again. But, She would be a gift to any man. You love the autumn, the red leaves and long white limbs. Scarred and Ugly limbs made you a forest of boredom. You have never known a forest of beech, of oak, of chestnut. Those are forests. Do I ever go to another man? With this face? This is a face that is known. How would you like to be ugly, Beautiful One? I was born ugly. All of my life I have been ugly. You, beautiful, who know nothing about women, do you know how an ugly woman feels? Do you know what it is to be ugly all your life and inside to feel that you are beautiful? Life is very strange. I would have made a good man, but I am all woman and all ugly. Yet, men have loved me and I have loved them. You and other men look at my ugliness yet there is that feeling that blinds him when he loves you. I, with that feeling, blind him, blind myself. Then one day, for no reason, he starts to see you ugly as you really are and he is not blind any more and then you see yourself as ugly as he sees you and you lose your man and your feeling. Do you understand this, Beautiful? After a while, when you are as ugly as I am, as ugly as women can be, then, as I say, after a while the feeling, the idiotic feeling that you are beautiful grows, slowly in once again. It grows like a cabbage. And then, when the feeling is grown, another man sees you and thinks you are beautiful and it is all to do over. Now I think I am past it, but it still might come. You are lucky, Beautiful One, that you are not ugly. You and your women are lucky.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Douglas NM McPetersburg 09.10.08 at 4:03 pm
Pure, magnificent, beautiful imperfection.
Without it there’d be no life.
With it there’d be everything.
Michael from NYC (friend of cs) 09.11.08 at 4:06 pm
why the long face, asked the bartender….kate, you write so beautifully, but so sadly (melancholilly?) May i suggest the following concoction, it’s a secret recipe, must be prepared by a trusted friend….first, obtain (from a used bookstore that needs the business) a faded paperback copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking, then shred same, either in a blender or by hand grating like you might a carrot for salad, stir a smidgeon (careful not to overdo, will leave a bitter, cynical taste) into your favorite fresh juice combination (mine is carrot/apple/celery) and sip slowly at sunrise (or around 11:00 a.m. which is first thing in the morning on cs time). Then make something happen that wouldn’t otherwise happen without your own personal effort. Plant something that will grow, for instance. Especially something that may require further nurturance or tending later. Then admire same. Repeat exercise daily. Then write some more.
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