Very much like Hemingway.
a bottle of sweet
white wine at lunchtime
and maybe if we feel it
then a spin along the ritz.
like we're very much in the twenties,
very happy drunk dapper in love and all bothered;
hanging out of streetcars, yelling at people and flinging champagne glasses,
hats askance and raggy dinner jackets
like those old poets from America who didn't need a job,
we really know how to tear the town in half.
it's all very well
knowing how to type a poem
and to feel the red leather
of sun on a car seat.
and it's all very well liking wine cocktails
and having winy eyes, full of potential,
looking out like passengers in the back half of limousines,
all very well you wearing those glasses you like so much
that make you look so writerly
or like a librarian in that fantasy that boys have of librarians,
but writers that make money write movies now,
not books,
and people who drink white wine in the park
very romantic
look like winos now and not very much
like Hemingway,
and you can be disillusioned now all you want if you like
but god it would be lovely to just be in love a little
with someone who wears jewelry without knowing the cost
with someone who wanders into stores and writes poems like O'Hara
with someone who takes a spin and dip and doesn't even get dizzy
with someone who sees trees and doesn't see trees but fingers
pointing up at the sky and sighing and saying aren't we just like lightning strikes.
wouldn't it be lovely wouldn't it be wonderful,
wouldn't it be lovely to be a little wonderful,
it sure would be better
than thinking the way I think now
where I have to have a job and still try to be these things.
white wine at lunchtime
and maybe if we feel it
then a spin along the ritz.
like we're very much in the twenties,
very happy drunk dapper in love and all bothered;
hanging out of streetcars, yelling at people and flinging champagne glasses,
hats askance and raggy dinner jackets
like those old poets from America who didn't need a job,
we really know how to tear the town in half.
it's all very well
knowing how to type a poem
and to feel the red leather
of sun on a car seat.
and it's all very well liking wine cocktails
and having winy eyes, full of potential,
looking out like passengers in the back half of limousines,
all very well you wearing those glasses you like so much
that make you look so writerly
or like a librarian in that fantasy that boys have of librarians,
but writers that make money write movies now,
not books,
and people who drink white wine in the park
very romantic
look like winos now and not very much
like Hemingway,
and you can be disillusioned now all you want if you like
but god it would be lovely to just be in love a little
with someone who wears jewelry without knowing the cost
with someone who wanders into stores and writes poems like O'Hara
with someone who takes a spin and dip and doesn't even get dizzy
with someone who sees trees and doesn't see trees but fingers
pointing up at the sky and sighing and saying aren't we just like lightning strikes.
wouldn't it be lovely wouldn't it be wonderful,
wouldn't it be lovely to be a little wonderful,
it sure would be better
than thinking the way I think now
where I have to have a job and still try to be these things.
Bio
DS Maolalai has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016) and "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019).