It Was a Long and Lonely Night
It was a long and lonely night and the women wept and wept and the children bounced off the walls and the cuckoo clock struck two or three and the old men slept in their armchairs and everything was ordinary and civilized and then came the Old Man from the Charitable Society who sounded very much like Billy Graham or was it Jimmy Swaggart and they wheeled me into the Home for the Malicious and Degenerate and the sky was dark and bloody and everything was ordinary and civilized and the leaves rustled and the crickets chirped and I sneezed in my wheelchair sucking on a long and hard long and hard cigarette thinking of my mother and father and how ashamed they must be that I turned out like that like a rapist and a mass murderer like a goodfornothing son and I sucked on my long and hard cigarette and blew a lot of smoke a lot of smoke and felt very sick and tired and the Old Man looked at me through his dark glasses holding up my trousers with one hand and grabbing my nose with the other I felt ashamed I felt very ashamed and I cried hallelujah praise the Lord and the angels came and they sat on my nose and wept and wept my trousers were very tight but the Old Man’s trousers were much tighter and he gave out a strange noise a very strange noise of some kind of flatulence and we wept and we wept and we wept gosh I thought I must be in Hollywood this must be Hollywood and they grabbed my balls and they sat me on a chair and gave me electroshock therapy and it felt good and I saw mama and she read the Bible and the angels wept and I made the front page of The New York Times and even and even TIME magazine my eyes were dirty and full of smoke and the doctor came and examined me and told me that I had a brain problem A BRAIN PROBLEM wow I thought I must be in the St. Elizabeth’s hospital and they gave me Thorazine and they gave me Lithium and they gave me Trilafon and they shot me up with all kinds of weird weird substances and I saw Charlie Manson on TV and he smiled and laughed and said it is now your time asshole to sit here in paradise I was very ashamed of my nakedness and cried to Jesus cried to Jesus to forgive me for all my sins for I didn’t really mean to shoot the president it was only a mistake a little voice in my brain told me to do it and the Old Man laughed and squeezed my balls even tighter tighter tighter a girl with small breasts came to visit me and I don’t remember her name because I’m a rapist and a mass murderer and I don’t remember names and she sat and read me from the Wall Street Journal and I got up with a huge erection and made a loud speech before the Charitable Society Committee for Criminally Insane with Religious Tendencies and they laughed and laughed and told me that I was really really a fool and I had no right to speak at all and I protested and yelled and kicked them in the legs and bit them in the noses and poured rubbing alcohol in their eyes and they tied me to my bed and gagged me and the night was long and lonely and the cuckoo clock cried and the old men unzipped their trousers and everything was ordinary and civilized.
January 5, 1987
--Alexander Shaumyan
The Door: Selected Poems
Share
Print
Save
Ron