If You Ask Me, I'll Say

New York Movie, 1939 

by Edward Hopper

To say the very thing
One feels and thinks
Is getting harder by the day.

How does one say a thing,
When chatter swirls within?
An unruly cast
Assembled at a reading deranged
Flinging, singing, mumbling, screaming.

If you insist too much
Impatiently
I could present to you
a feeble show
Strung together with
Someone's sputtering opening
A muddled middle
And the wriggling tail of quite another.

But if you ask again
Sincerely
I would have to tell you
One cannot possibly say anything at all
While waiting in the wings
Of one's own cacophonous play
Lips pursed
And listening. 

Last Night Arose

Head by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1915)

Last night arose
Beneath my window
A golden gleaming sun.

Steady glare of the streetlight
And a troupe of dancing rain
A whirling expressionist woodcut
Etched onto the tarmac plain.

I watched transfixed
As the sky raged
And the tears began to swim.
I watched transfixed
And willed the glum fog
Inside me to lift.

But what warmth could I borrow?
What light could I seek?
What courage could I muster?
From a pool of damp lies and dreams?

To watch it transfixed
With hope and patience
And a quiet desperate might,
Was only a weak trick
To get through the black, black night.