a poem I read tonight

I have come to the decision that I only feel good before I get on stage, while I’m on stage, and in the few minutes of applause after I am done.

All my good feelings dissolve a few moments after that.

Isn’t that known as Janis Joplin syndrome?

THE END OF THE WORLD

The best part of
The end of the world
Was the moment
Just before it happened

When
The ground and horizon that had been clear before us
slipped a bit
and we said
hey,
This is it, this must be it

And it was grand
because
for that one second we knew just what was going to happen
We knew that we could expect things to change
Because change was inevitable and unavoidable
and sex was over but so were war and famine
and we thought all we had to go on
in the few minutes we had left
were tenderness and a refusal to give up –

But then

the shock

to find

the end was instead so
quiet,
low clarinet
instead of tympani,
that
we weren’t sure it had happened
until long after it was over
until the morning we woke up and saw the sky turn bright white

We turned up our faces toward it
And they shone like hubcaps
Rolling away from a wreck
And we couldn’t eat breakfast together and
We didn’t kiss goodbye and we barely
Recognized each other
As we went about our business

And that was the true end of the world

Or at least
of my part of it