I claimed
to be all out of tears,
though I’m
sure I’d just heard that phrase somewhere
and
thought it sounded hardboiled. Like
something
a detective would say to a beautiful woman
who is not
impressed. And still, I was sad,
but not
sad so much as resigned to the whims of clowns.
I claimed
to be whole. But that was a front, in clowns’
makeup, a fake-out,
a mask with drawn-on tears.
In
reality, I was far from sad.
In
reality, I was off somewhere,
looking
for a home, looking for the woman
with whom
I was in love, and who I didn’t even like.
That’s not
true, either. In fact, I was nothing like
a man in
love—and much more akin to a clown’s
saggy ass.
And in truth, the reason was a woman.
I think.
Though it was really hard to see through the tears,
to see the
horizon of perspective, off somewhere
beyond the
edge of town, at the intersection of desperate and sad.
By noon
the next day I was tired of this sad
sack
complaining, and I resigned myself to act like
a grownup,
over lunch somewhere
expensive,
and then coffee, at the place clowns
go to die,
drowning in their own tears.
All of
this to impress a woman!
Had I been
a woman,
I’d have
been repulsed by this sad
posturing—the
artificial tears
and
unconvincing tales of woe. Like
a bar
where only clowns
drink,
acting like nowhere is somewhere.
I wanted
to go somewhere
else,
somewhere new, with the woman
of my
dreams—not a nightmare filled with clowns.
I wanted
to be through with this sad
life, and
reengage like a butterfly, like
a cloud,
like a rainbow sprung from God’s tears.
You clowns!
I know you’re hiding somewhere,
behind
your tears, behind the love of a woman,
where
happy is sad. But we’re all alike.