I Woke Next to the Corpse by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Page 127

though it was apparently dwindling, that if it looked around often enough, it would find where its mate had gone. It might as well, as it didn’t seem interested in a substitute.

I remembered that girl from high school who was too good for me, and thought that I should have given her the opportunity to make that determination. I didn’t want to see anymore, and drew the curtains.

I must have dozed off for a bit. The sun had passed mid-day and was now causing tree shadows to hit the window glass at a different angle which I could no longer see, with the window open, in the full light. I think I was finally contented.

I never got a close up of whatever dream I may or may not have experienced. I also never knew what hit me, but something must

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have. Maybe natural causes is given too high a rating, but is undoubtedly affected by how one chooses to view “natural.” The monotone blue screen was pleasant and reminded me of something I once saw at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art, vaingloriously acronymed as MoMA, which is on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan. The totality of my dream convinced me that the absence of crime doesn’t pay in post-World War II America. Ones condemned to disagree might do personally well to get off their numbers and have the nerve and creativity to concoct a dream of their own. Vito Genovanoria never did, and only he can tell you of what it cost him. And if they can’t or don’t, I no longer care, and possibly in an anticipatory fashion never really did.

CIAO, SAPS.

“Yes, madam, I am finished. My star has fallen. I have no fight left in me. I work and I try, yet know that all is but a farce.

I await the end of the tragedy, and strangely detached from everything, I do not feel any more an actor. I feel I am the last of spectators.” – John Herbert Dillinger; April 20, 1938.

I Woke Next to the Corpse