Chronicles of unhappiness

 
Too big a subject to tackle in a novel
Dickens's friends living in a hovel

Lovely things once, now rank dusty, untouched
So soon the springy leaf like skin turned parched
In the living rooms of fading memoirs
All schemes spiral the thick vortex of the hours

Hell hath not such cruel designs on thy soul
Like those thin corn bricks floating in a bowl
A howling dog moves on wheels on thy floor
While the gaunt postman rings twice at thy door

Cousins under blankets with warm woolen mittens
Whiskeys on ice and whiskers on kittens

Presage forth a scene of trees at Christmas
The conjured pictures of Diane Arbus
Aging harlots, tawdry twins, all that lot
Some may like it hot but some like it not

Well. How will washing with soap cleanse the mind
Of the pain the butcher boy left behind?
And as the mascara runs down thy cheeks 
Plans are made in haste for the coming weeks

Women in nighties with blue satin sashes
Grey frozen rivers that melt into spring

If by chance your daily luck fluctuates
Fortune will never see what punctuates
Those white cells and black cells curdling the blood
Nor the full brunt of such a raging flood

Hark. Salvation draws nearer every day
No one imagines the true horror in the play
As the solace of the private chamber
And the trill in the nostrils of slumber

He was poor because he didn't want much
So he got none but he's OK and alive

But the family couldn't cope without shoes
He in his sadness invented the blues
As they walked away leaving him for a fool
People came and danced and said it was cool

So long, So long, it's been good to know you
Jus don't know how to thank you for the stew
You blew off the dust from my memories
May I take you back to the tuilleries?

Oh la, Oh la, there comes and goes a breeze
 

Rome, 22 9 2007