Pink

Pink

Hanging uncomfortably close to his stall,
The cape still holds the scent
Of other bulls whose sides it has brushed.
But,
It no longer burns so bright;
For days he has tried to reach it
And now he is tired.

“We say to ourselves,
‘Why do we bother?’”
Said Madeleine Asher,
51,
Who pushed her curtains back one morning
To see the garbage man on Medina Drive
Dump lawn clippings in with the trash.



The second stanza is a quote from the following article. I’m not sure if I have to cite my source since this is a poem. But this is the source information:
Schwartz, Noaki. “Residents Say Crews Are Trashing Recyclables” Los Angeles Times 22 June 2001: B1+.

Rant Rant 22: The Weatherman

"All of the people I could be," he tells us, "they got fewer and fewer until finally they got reduced to only one -- and that's who I am.”

All promise in a person eventually disappears. In small increments, it’s replaced by disappointment, missed opportunities, and fear. Eventually, senility and physical decline will creep into this list. At the moment I am too young to know and can only speculate their addition. Perhaps, as we cross a certain point in our lives, the size of the increments increase at a constant rate. In other words, once the ball starts rolling, it builds into an avalanche. One disappointment easily sets off a chain of disappointments.

While the idea of an avalanche is illustrative of the increasing rate, I find myself applying a different metaphor to the entire idea. I see a roofed veranda being shuttered up. How southern, maybe I’ve read too much Tennessee Williams. But, the shuttered veranda is applied differently. It represents the person left behind, not the rate of decline. In the beginning the veranda has light coming in on all sides. The person can look out in all directions. But, there are shutters and, when they are all closed, only odd trickles of light beam into the veranda. What’s worse, shutters always let in a soft glow of light. What’s the glow? It’s a reminder.

It’s fitting that I name check Williams. The entire idea smacks of “Sweet Bird of Youth.” Then again, it also smacks of Willie Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” Charles in Madame Bovary, Swann in Remembrance of Things Past, Jake in The Sun Also Rises, Dean in On the Road, or all the surviving members of the Compson family in The Sound and the Fury. Part of the tragedy in all these characters is that they survive in the husks of wasted lives.

A large percentage of us are destined to be the walking husks of wasted potential. ...