By Stephen Dreyfus Dreyfus_affair@yahoo.com
Date: 26 February 2001
Writing in the Rain
What am I doing? I'm writing in the rain,
Tears from Heaven sent to wash away the sins of man.
I'm gazing inside the glorious fountain
Below the library's proud domain,
Reflecting a time, not long ago,
When somber skies subtracted shadows from passers-by,
Erasing dimensions of eronious dreams
Of the greatness of Man's humanity.
Forever God's forgiving, compassion without bound,
Understanding us, when even we
Don't seem to understand ourselves,
Yet in his vain interpretations of the universe
Man, alone, condemns to Hell.
Oh, fear not the pain of some damnation
Nor ponder woes of saving souls;
If God is Love, as I've been told,
Man's justice 'tis but a slur to God.
No God would ever condemn to Hell,
Yet Man doth daily, in the name of God.
What am I doing? I'm writing in the rain,
Hoping, perhaps, some pseudo poetry
Might please enough to ease my mind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once upon a Monday morn
With clouds covering the earth
In a sheet of dismal gray,
I was returning to my dorm on Pickens Street,
A boarding home of days swept by
When the building stood with glory,
But now was old, and "Rooms For Rent"
Was posted in fluorescent red
Upon the peeling column near the door.
Old too, of course, the land lady
With withered hair and missing teeth.
Sometimes lapsing into senility
Threatening to beat me with her broom.
If I still failed to clean my room.
At any rate, below my room,
Beneath the dingy dusty hall
Where roaches raced across the floor
Escaping certain doom of being crushed
Into the fading linoleum,
There was another room like mine,
With tarnished mirrors and Venetian blinds
Allowing horizontal bars of light
To pattern the pale and yellowing walls.
Here was the room where Ronnie stayed.
Ronnie. I met him when he entered,
A Ping-Pong racket in his hand.
He was quite polite, that's to be sure,
For he offered me a toke or two
To become illegally inebriated,
But I refused.
Why? Because he looked so strange,
A freak who looked the part;
Three hundred pounds, but five foot five,
A watermellon with a smile.
Still, I called him by his proper name;
Everybody else called him Fatboy,
Sisters, brothers, and just others,
For friends he did have none.
He was presently embarking upon his career,
A fascinating future of pumping gas
At Ward's Gulf station in Columbia.
But Ronnie knew little of his woes;
His faith in God, it was so great
He could scarcely tell between
Patterns of reality and the illusions of his mind.
He worried about nothing, "God will tell me all,"
He said. "Whatever He wills, it is, as it will be."
Eventually he got me stoned
And as we sat upon each bed
Within his room on Pickens Street,
He started repeating his little quotes
Concerning destiny and things to be.
He mentioned a mystical encounter
With a princess dressed in silk
Who soon would be coming his way
And he would know, and she would know,
And they'd live happily ever after
As in some fairy tale of yesterday.
I realized then, that he was crazed.
But the next day, he was already gone,
And I wondered if he had done
Exactly what he'd spoken of;
For he told me, tomorrow he would leave
To live with the beautiful girl
That God took the time to point out to him
Just two days before.
But then I remembered they never met,
And I sighed, as I perceived
The futility of his mirage.
A few days later I heard the truth:
The white coats had come to take him away
To the hospital on Bull Street.
Next Sunday I went to visit Ronnie
(It only was a four block walk,)
But again, the sky, a xeroxed carbon
Of the Twilight Zone's forboding doom;
And I entered Gestapo walls
Where caged beasts were locked away,
Out of sight and out of mind,
Safe from the gaping jaws of society.
An orderly unlocked his prison bars,
And grinning, Ronnie came to greet me,
As he joyfully experienced
A few more square feet of freedom.
Meanwhile, the orderly looked on longingly.
Which sex he was, I could not tell.
I argued with Ronnie for a while,
Under the orderly's watchful eye,
Extolling virtues of reality.
But he was content to continue in fantasy,
A Don Quixote of his day
In a world of delirious trembling drunks
Wrecked from Ron Rico, tripping on peyote;
His eyes burning like two dying coals
That told over his tale, his perspective on life:
"Whatever He wills, it is, as it will be."
I left him within the dogpound
The hospital's absurd
Society's insane
Excuse
For some asylum
Somewhat supported
By insufficient public funds.
Once again, I wondered whether we truly lived
Within an enlightened era
Or were we still floundering within the Middle Ages
With expectations of messiahs
Who would cast away all evil souls
Who didn't think our way.
I shuddered at the thought
And pondered if Ronnie would ever be cured
Of an insatiable faith in a personal God
Advising him to never be frustrated
With the prospects of tomorrow
"For whatever He wills, it is, as it will be."
I never saw Ronnie again.
No Prospiracy to disappoint,
No mafia of madness, with agents everywhere,
Constantly comforting, watching and testing,
To see if one could care enough
To enlist in a Conspiracy of Love.
For I, too, once had clutched a Linus blanket,
My ticket to Marshall Pickens escapades,
Where Lucy's always right.
But the hospital was no longer home
Where Psychosis Ave met Depression Boulevard.
And so, I hurried back toward Pickens Street,
Beneath the billowing gray clouds
Still holding back the threatening rain.
I barely made it back
Before a downpour drenched the earth,
Tears from Heaven
Sent to wash away
The sins of man.
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