Unable

It’s not quite bad enough,
not quite what they would call
a crisis, a breakdown.

You function
and the muscles around your smile
still work, perhaps

more out of habit than emotion,
but well enough
that passersby would never know

your fragility.
You dance in the night,
swaying alone to the Basin Street Blues,

music filling the room,
animating your struggling soul.
There should be bourbon

and a film noir blonde.
There should be smoke in the room,
an atmosphere of mystery

and falseness where even truth
is distrusted.
There should be the hero,

you, of course,
strong and certain, brash and brave,
never long the captive.

If nothing else, you have that right,
a refusal to die in chains,
fighting past the dark demons of your soul,

battered, scarred and swaying,
but still standing, fearful
but ready for the next fight,

unable to to win,
unable to surrender.

About this Poem. 

Don’t ask me where this one came from, but it was insistent. Perhaps I have been reading too many mysteries lately. Depression meets Phillip Marlowe. Cue the music.

The picture was taken a block and a half from Madison Square Garden Friday morning, about 7AM.

Tom