WHAT DREAMS OF YOU, WALT WHITMAN, BEFORE MY OLD JUKEBOX SOUL

It’s on nights I’m too tired to sleep

that I think with the jazz radio on

and attempt to collect dust

from the nebula of my mind.

What usually surfaces is how much I miss you,

or how hard it is to go on during

certain nights of the week –

usually Friday and Saturday –

with this lonely pitiful feeling,

making the case for worthlessness

and the inability to touch a finger to my nose

even if shown a diagram.

Sometimes it is death that clouds my mind,

but I still don’t know what that is.

I’ve only had vague encounters

with a cloaked baron

who poses as a shadow.

Tonight I think of this:

The longer I spend alone

and the more distant

past relationships become

the more I feel incapable

of loving or being loved,

of maintain mature

Relationships.

My quirks have multiplied

from grains on a stalk

to grains on the beach.

My body has grown soft

and I have begun to notice deformities in my face.

Never before have I been so self-conscious about

so much,

and my confidence has suffered severely,

consequently.

I feel awkward at best in social settings,

retired to a shell of withered leaves

in a field of blossoming buds,

unable to conduct simple conversations

with the closest of friends,

let alone charm the pants off

the girl one table over.

How is it that I’ve become this?

How is it that You ever loved me?

That You ever found anything of interest

in this old shoebox from the attic?

If love is unexpected

It must be blind too.

And yet

I reserve hope:

I know one day

the ship will reach harbor,

and her tired crew will again

touch warm solid earth,

eat fresh ripened fruits

and live

peaceful and happy

upon a trove of once-buried treasure.

Copyright Oren Peleg 2009