Rereading 'The Trial'
by Alan Weadick
[ poetry - august 05 ]
I can still wake too early
Or too late for even the most
Breathtaking and light-filled birdsong
To make a dent in the case
Being prepared against me.
I can't imagine either
What it is I am supposed to have done
To have set in motion the unknowable
And inexorable workings of the court.
Unless it has something to do
With the curiously independent life
Genitals seem to lead whether
Or perhaps because of what passes
For your bubbly personality chooses
To have nothing to do with them.
Them;
Them and their spidery dreams
Of taking over the whole shop
And wrapping it all up in a ball of dry hunger
For future generations to view
In glass cases in museums, sniff, and pass on.
There is that; which would be a terrible shame.
Or else it might just be cigarettes and alcohol
And a rake of other bad chemicals
Doing their work with a rare and selfless
Diligence through all kinds of weather,
Seasons, swellings and shrinkings
Of the will-to-power despite
Or perhaps because of never
Having lifted a finger through
The lean years but, it must also be admitted
And taken into account,
Never having helped or hindered
The present shower into governance
And in fact wasting a good slab
Of the glorious 'nineties
Growing beards of belly-button
Fluff in bad flats as, at all hours
Of the day and night, I took Kafka to bed
And let the honky world outside go hang.
