we hope you win

this time.

alone

if there were only some help from the

other writers, some lift, some gamble,

some fire,

but they are lax,

hang between nowhere and nowhere,

it hurts the head and the gut to

read them

and when I am feeling particularly

bad

as I am tonight

there’s no place to go for a

boost or a laugh

or even a small

loan,

nothing to do but

pour another drink

look about the room

at anything—

a chair, a shoe, a box of

toothpicks,

I realize that there is

only one writer I can go

to,

he’s got to do it for

me

once again,

get that line down

brisk and clean

to make the snarling women

laugh,

to make the lion turn in his

dream,

to make the dead armies

flower,

to become young again,

fresh as a lightning

flash,

to consume the monster

of sorrow,

to break horror with

just your

fingers, to

strangle the

darkness.

now

do it

do it

the gods are laughing

already.

the joke

it often happens when the party is

going well,

somebody will say, “wait a minute, that

reminds me, I heard this

joke, it will only take a minute and I

promise not to tell

more than one.”

he leans forward and begins to tell

it, and this is the worst part because

you know it will not be funny, and even worse

than that, not even plausible, but he goes

on as your stomach feels as if you had

eaten a rotten egg, you reach the punch

line long before he gets to it, then he

finishes,

looks about.

there is silence, no laughter, not even

a smile.

“wait,” he says, “don’t you get it?”

“I understand,” I tell him.

then he leans back, thinks that I

have no sense of humor, have had a

bad day, or that he has overestimated my

intelligence.

he could be right on all counts, I know

that I often watch famous comedians

who make millions tell awful jokes

while the audience roars with

appreciation and across the nation

numberless others join in from their

living rooms

as I sit there and think, this

stuff is bad, very bad, there’s

little doubt about

it.

yet some drunk sits in a room

with me

and is offended because I

don’t roll on the rug

when he lays a

dead egg that makes even

the gods

cringe.

but they are never offended

enough not to return

and toss in a new joke as bad

as the first, or worse,

returning to the first,

having forgotten the previous

agony.

in all my decades of joke-listening

I’ve only heard one that is

worthwhile,

it goes like this—

no wait, I’ve forgotten

it.

you’re

lucky.

Glasgow

do you mean in Scotland? he

asked.

I’m going to send some poems

there, I said.

you mean they have magazines

there? he asked.

yes, I answered,