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Saturday, March 19, 2016

Shadow, Fred Feldman

The Shadow
by Fred Feldman

Your feelings matter, and your opinions are important
Context is everything and propriety is god i.e.
“there is nothing you can say that means anything at all”
and I’m sick of sitting at tables and being sober
under the pretension that it means anything at all
I could fill a book with the words I’ve spoken that nobody heard
Yours is longer and more interesting – you should self-publish!!

Reading another op-ed piece in a magazine
reminds me of all the stuff I can’t articulate
The parties where I sat at a table and wished I wasn’t sober
and wishing – oh, wishing! – that my head was removable
And I had a thought – but now we’re talking about something else
There are ideas I keep a secret, though I’ll tell you if you listen
but I know it’s hard to hear with the music turned up so loud

My friends and I, we went on a long car ride together
It is nobler to be a stranger, and praiseworthy to keep thoughts unknown
After about several hours, I feel that I know everything about everyone
and of course it’s untrue, but context is everything (in the way that it is for food)
Left overstuffed, I willingly bear nothing more than my own four walls
and maybe music, but not always – I prefer the concept of it
though it’s pretension to say that it means anything at all

You must concede that Meaning’s lost with repetition
but repetition’s what gets the people to listen
Trust me that you’ll like me better if I don’t exist
and I’ll be less embarrassed if I choke back tears
So it goes that after an evening of focused self-effacement I’ll 

get the hankering to see my own face in the mirror
so I turn on the light and disappear

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