Two Poems

Jerome Sala

THE INTERPRETATION OF SCREAMS

the cultural analyst convinced us that the screams

of teenagers were throwbacks

to a suppressed form of religion

that surfaces now and then

whenever anyone really hot

appears with erotic radiance

in the public sphere—

those are screams of pleasure

the friends of the god

granted the gift of ecstasy.

And besides

as one early ’60s horror movie advised

screaming can save your life

for it destroys the inner lobster

which would otherwise

shatter the spine

of those in great fear.

Following these theories

we were forced to listen to droning solemnities

about the similarities of pleasure and pain

fear and power

and when we objected

were smashed in the head

(like a rubber Bobo doll gets smashed by a child

with a mallet)

with a cliché about clichés:

they’re solemn

these truths

we were told

because they’re true.

To which we said

no they’re not

truth is never boring

because even if it’s only the effect of power

what could make you scream more loudly

and with more delight.

MY ONE AND ONLY

The only people for me are the mad ones …

—Jack Kerouac

The only ones for me are the shy ones, the ones who are

too shy to be born, too shy to talk about their shyness,

too shy to be saved, who desire nothing but the yawn of

the common, who know how to douse out a Roman candle

when called upon to do so, the ones who are like spiders

scurrying back to their webs rather than devouring

the incredible shrinking people we’ve offered them as food.

The only ones for me are the tired ones, the ones who are

too tired to play their horns, too tired to walk away from

the land of the peppy, too tired not to shave, who set fire

to their lawns because they’ve fallen asleep smoking, who don’t

understand the calls of the louses who want us to return to

Roman decadence, who lecture us on the superiority of sleep

yet refuse to beg for giant steeples or oceans in their dreams.

The only ones for me are the defensive ones, the repressed ones,

the passive-aggressive co-dependent ones, the addicted ones,

the only ones for me are the squares, the uptight ones,

the greedy ones, the blatantly self-serving ones, those who think

small, who don’t know their right from their left, the cowardly

ones, the ashamed, the nobodies on their way to incomprehension,

the order takers, the inconspicuous or conspicuously consuming ones.

The only ones for me are the crawling ones, the ones who stall

on their way to utopia, the ones who think about leaving the womb,

then head back the other way, the ones who refuse to face the

problems you’ve created for them, the ones who roam through Rome

never figuring out how to do as the Romans do, the ones who would

rather buy a cheap figurine than a scented candle, but who know,

that in a pinch, a scented candle will do, without knowing what it will do.

The only ones for me are sly ones, the ones who are too sly

not to follow the norm, too sly to balk at failure, too sly to

rage, who die for everything but the pursuit of the extraordinary,

who know how not to get invited to the Roman orgy of life and then

how not to enjoy themselves when they don’t get there, the ones

who are like friars refusing to change their heavy, brown burlap

robes in the heat, the ones who refuse to take shelter under the

giant, man-eating plants they would be famous for growing if they

didn’t think debates over fame and nobody-ism were strictly for the un-sly.

The only ones for me are the stymied ones, the floundering ones,

the small-minded, the unadventurous, the late ones, the crybabies,

those who squander their asceticism, those who ponder the virtues

of athleticism and decide it’s not worth the effort, those who

follow the rules to such an absurd degree that the rules become

absurd, the shirkers who refuse to light a candle in the darkness,

and who make up the dark matter of the universe, now beginning to

be explored and quantified, much to their chagrin.