convicted of child-rape and now everybody is enraged

except me as the waiter goes for a third bottle, returns,

and as he inserts the corkscrew he fixes his eyes on

me and I silently (of course) wish

him luck and this time he

makes it.

I am the wine-taster, he pours me a bit, I give it a sip,

wait a moment, nod to him that the wine is all

right.

for the remainder of our stay there the other people talk

as if I am non-existent but upon hearing the

conversation I am most happy

that I am excluded.

upon leaving I pay the bill, tip 20%, and we walk to

the parking lot, the others feeling that they have acted

properly

in our civilization of expensive restaurants. they even

say goodnight to me. as the valets rush for our expensive

cars I

wonder what the waiter will do with those two bottles

with the ruined corks, I always dig the corks out. drink

the wine, cork and all.

meanwhile my wife is waiting to tell me, when we are

in the car alone, that I treated the waiter quite

horribly, didn’t I know how to act in public?

and I won’t

reply

hey, hey, hey

sometimes it’s bad or just ordinary,

you adjust to senseless conditions,

then a new card drops out of the deck,

it severs the tendon between the thumb

and the forefinger,

a dark electric numbness overwhelms the

spinal cord

and your mother’s face appears on a

billboard

skewered as it should be,

advertising

adversity as the norm,

you pour a fresh drink,

duck down between the stink of humanity

and the ferocious boredom of

time,

come up once to blink,

go down twice to think it over,

dial 911

and get a voiceless voice

like the dead scream of a

caterpillar

as Rome sculpts the monster

and children as little

as flies

crawl the walls of your

brain.

band-aid

we are destroyed by our

conscience, I explained to

him.

no, no, that’s not what I

mean, he said.

I mean, I’ll wake up

feeling good, you know,

ready for action, ready

for whatever’s out there and

then the first word she’ll

say to me

will be

vicious and stupid,

really unwarranted, you know.

then, I’m depressed, the

whole day’s

shot through the head.

we are destroyed by expecting

more than there is,

I said.

or, he continued, I’ll be out

doing my job all day, it will be hard

enough, but I’ll see it through

and I’ll drive up thinking, now

for the good part. I’ll park,

get out, walk in the door,

and she’ll say something

totally unrelated either to her

or to me, I mean something that

is simply and violently ugly,

you know, and there

goes the evening and the night,

there goes any good feeling

I might have had.

you sound like a nitpick,

I said.