The Guilt Museum
Yes, I've lived here in my guilt museum quite awhile,
rocking endlessly in my mother's chair,
surrounded by these little trophies of my past.
Here, let me show you a vintage faux pas,
Gaucherie 1956, bottled even before I had entered kindergarten.
Or something in a classic 1959 mistake:
the chrome still as dull as the day it came off the production line,
the tires flat and dusty as a crone's breast, heh heh.
Sometimes the passage of time imparts a kind of deceptive polish to these old wrecks
(the way a suit gets shiny from wear, you know)
and I have to spend a good many hours in the lab restoring them
to show just how bad they really are. ...
Hm, perhaps I could perform a musical composition for you,
one of my early forays into dissonance,
D. C. Mitchel, Op. LVII (1962), Rondo for Solo Stumble?
There's so much here, you could spend days going over it -- I do.
And how about this unfinished mural depicting, or attempting to depict,
that time back in 1964 when I failed miserably to --
You're not leaving already? What a shame.
Well, it was time for me to consider dusting my treasures,
and to think about what the future holds for my little collection here.
(Why, I've barely filled up this one room so far;
can you imagine what I'll have in ten years?
Sometimes I just sit here rocking all evening,
running my hands over some fine old blunder and daydreaming, you know.
You have to pay attention to these antiques or they wither and die,
after a fashion. It's almost as if they were alive.
Yes, I've lived here in my guilt museum quite awhile,
rocking endlessly in my mother's chair,
surrounded by these little trophies of my past.
Here, let me show you a vintage faux pas,
Gaucherie 1956, bottled even before I had entered kindergarten.
Or something in a classic 1959 mistake:
the chrome still as dull as the day it came off the production line,
the tires flat and dusty as a crone's breast, heh heh.
Sometimes the passage of time imparts a kind of deceptive polish to these old wrecks
(the way a suit gets shiny from wear, you know)
and I have to spend a good many hours in the lab restoring them
to show just how bad they really are. ...
Hm, perhaps I could perform a musical composition for you,
one of my early forays into dissonance,
D. C. Mitchel, Op. LVII (1962), Rondo for Solo Stumble?
There's so much here, you could spend days going over it -- I do.
And how about this unfinished mural depicting, or attempting to depict,
that time back in 1964 when I failed miserably to --
You're not leaving already? What a shame.
Well, it was time for me to consider dusting my treasures,
and to think about what the future holds for my little collection here.
(Why, I've barely filled up this one room so far;
can you imagine what I'll have in ten years?
Sometimes I just sit here rocking all evening,
running my hands over some fine old blunder and daydreaming, you know.
You have to pay attention to these antiques or they wither and die,
after a fashion. It's almost as if they were alive.
--5/9/72
dedicated affectionately to David,
for no sensible reason except it's
the first good thing I've written
in months
dedicated affectionately to David,
for no sensible reason except it's
the first good thing I've written
in months
