Ways to fill a cup

There were only so many ways to fill a cup,
So few pathways and gestures and nods,
Before they all became tiresome,
Snatching vitality from the air,
Locking it within a grooved and etched cabinet
For future use when, absurdly,
They could somehow seem novel again;
Only this time with the cold glare
Of irony sharpening the glass
Into fragments that could slit a wrist,
Spilling onto the table the excess
Blood and beer and wine,
When care had ceased to enter
The hand that poured and caressed without feeling.

When softer methods of incandescence failed,
It became the task of lesser demons
To lounge and scrape and bow,
With twittering laughter to escape
And fly to escarpments on high,
Looking down at angry, fist-shaking
Barmaids with sneering, snide grimaces,
Mocking and slapping their backsides,
Sticking out their tongues and refusing to leave,
No matter what threats may be leveled.

But old regulars endure and continue
To order and consume their usual,
In the usual manner,
Through avenues worked smooth,
By repetition and induced familiarity,
Remaining anchored to seats and stools,
Going home trailing their tethers,
To be reeled back in with a regularity
That surprises not a single soused soul.

And when the hoarse fall air,
Exhales a newcomer into our midst,
Creating currents of conversation,
That all are careful to hide and keep
Out of earshot of even their neighbor,
The glances still manage to rip free from holds,
Cut through the smoke and feigned indifference,
So that contempt is sure to run reckless among us,
Frothing and fouling the atmosphere,
Before the man can even take off his hat,
The object of a sudden, fleeting unity.

He eventually learns to carve out paths like us,
Witnessing first-hand the limits of this space,
Yet still grasping it and holding fast,
Until hollow snickers are rediscovered
While drinking from the far side of a glass,
Where he can see truly, that here is
The opposite of both joy and boredom.
Or perhaps he senses this instinctively,
And with a mighty wind of derision that
Demolishes the combined forces of our own,
Takes his coat and hat in hand and,
Without a word or sound that we can hear,
Walks right back out the way he came,
Never to be seen by barmaids, demons
Or drunkards again.

Flickering Prayer

By the flickering light of the television,
In bed late at night
The room otherwise dark,
She closes her eyes and makes her prayer.

Murmuring lips wield phrases from memory,
The talk of the church
Filtered through the viscera
Of a day’s events, people, wonderings, longings.

Fitfully, she rambles through minutiae,
Pauses over topics of greater import,
Loses her rhythm and seizes it again,
Careful to keep a pleading tone from entering her voice,
Knowing that the Lord helps those who help themselves;
That the Lord pities and punishes those who only complain,
Who scorn His gift of life.
She asks and requests,
Sometimes humbly, sometimes almost immoderately,
But always ready to be denied and to accept denial
With the gratitude and equanimity befitting a vessel of His will.

She finishes with an audible, “Amen,”
That escapes with her breath,
A soft and pliable offering,
Barely reaching the edge of the bed,
Before drifting up under the ceiling,
To mingle with the smoke from her last cigarette.

By the bright, steady light of the television,
Her weary head sinks back,
Wisps of hair splayed out gently,
Thinly decorating the pillow
With their ghostly fragility.
She rolls onto her side and tries to sleep.

The Early Swan Song of Robert Sheldon

I have a morbid fascination with nuclear annihilation.
Well, I suppose that it’s cliché to call it that,
But that’s precisely the way you’d describe my fascination.
I know for sure you’d say it was morbid, so don’t try to deny it now.
But I don’t find it morbid;
I find it beautiful, somewhat soothing, even rapturous.
In the abstract, of course. If it really happened, it would be hell on Earth
And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone past, present or future.
Nonetheless, whenever I start thinking about it,
It whips up my imagination and consumes my mind with its grandeur.

I imagine myself walking down the street, passing a couple complaining
About how people never make real connections anymore.
So I resolve to connect with the next couple coming my way.
The man says to the woman, “We could die at any time, you know.”
So I jump right into the conversation, with gusto.
“Oh yes, I could die any time! I could keel over right in front of you
A mere five seconds from now!
You could keel over five seconds from now!”
The couple would be surprised, but impressed by my confident tone.
The woman would say, “Oh, sure,” so I’d continue.
“Right now, as we speak, there could be dozens of nuclear missiles
Headed straight for DC. There could have been some terrible accident
And a global nuclear exchange could be occurring
Without us even knowing it.
Right now there could be 100 thermonuclear warheads, fusion bombs,
H-bombs, re-entering the atmosphere on their long trip from Russia
And closing in on our city, ready to wipe us all out.
We could have only 90 seconds before they all detonate
1,000 feet in the air above our heads.”
I’d be getting excited now.
“It’d destroy all of DC, much of Northern Virginia,
Much of Montgomery County and a lot of Prince George’s.
Nothing left but twisted beams and scorched concrete walls,
Softening under the heat of the firestorms.
They’d get Baltimore, too. And Philly.
They’d have tons hitting New York,
And forget about Norfolk; they’d want to make absolutely sure
They got the naval base real good.
All over the country, just blazing death and radiation and fire.
It’d be all across Europe, too. From London, Paris and Berlin,
All the way out to where our own missiles started hitting,
Obliterating Moscow and St. Petersburg,
Spreading death all the way out through Siberia, almost to Japan.
And that would only be the beginning!
The radiation would spread out to all the areas not hit directly,
Killing virtually every living thing in its path.
And anything that survived that would almost surely die
Once the nuclear winter sets in and darkens the skies.
It could be millions, tens of millions of years,
Maybe even more, before life on Earth would begin to truly recover.
Maybe it never would and the planet would stay quiet for a few
Billion years until the sun goes nova and swallows it up
In the biggest nuclear explosion the solar system has ever seen,
Millions of times more energy released than when we killed ourselves.
And maybe there’d be people somewhere else,
Shaking whatever kinds of heads they have on their alien necks,
Wondering if any of it could have been different.”

And then I realize that no real couple would just sit there
And quietly listen to all that, unless they thought I was crazy
And were afraid to speak up, but that doesn’t bother me.
I don’t really go outside anymore, to be honest.
When I have to, I have to, but it truly isn’t very often.
Since the accident, I don’t have to work
And in these days of cell phones and internet, I even get
My groceries delivered straight to my door.
As long as I pay the rent and all the bills on time,
Nobody bothers me. It makes me want to scream sometimes.

But don’t get me wrong, I don’t scream for myself.
I scream for the world. For cruelty, for suffering.
For the stupidity and pointlessness of it.
For how those nice letters come in the mail,
That start with, ‘Dear Mr. Sheldon,’
Or, ‘Dear Robert,’
Or, ‘Dear Oxfam America Supporter.’
The ones that say there are starving Native American children,
Living on freezing reservations, who will continue to starve,
But for the warm hearts and open wallets of people like me.
The ones that talk about poor people not being able to
See a doctor if it weren’t for our generous donations to free clinics.
“Why do you need me?” is what I often scream.
“Why can’t these things just be taken care of?
Why does it take a man to be nearly crippled and sitting on the
Fruits of a pile of lawsuits to put food in kids’ stomachs?
What is wrong with you people? How is this is so hard?
I’m telling you right now, it is so very simple for me to write a check.
Why, if that is all it takes, why are children still hungry and cold?
Why do people drink contaminated water across half the planet?
Why do babies die of diarrhea and mosquito bites?
Why does the richest country on the planet not take care
Of the most basic necessities for its people?
Why why why why why why why why why why?!”

I scream and I scream, even though I know it is silly,
Especially considering that I’m not even really screaming.
It’s more of an intense, hoarse exhale that I let drone on for a while.
It makes me feel better if I do it every now and then.
So even if someday I rupture some important blood vessel doing it,
I’ll continue on with it when I need it.
It doesn’t embarrass me because I’m pretty sure the neighbors can’t
Hear me screaming, even though the walls are so thin in this building.
Perhaps late at night when it is very quiet,
The man who lives behind my TV,
Or the young couple who live behind my stove,
Can hear the screaming, but it must be quite indistinct,
As it isn’t very loud at all.
They probably mistake it for a radiator hissing,
Before they remember that these new apartment buildings
Don’t have old radiators that do that anymore.
Then they’ll get distracted, because people have such short
Attention spans these days, and they’ll forget about the indistinct noise.
I’ll be finished by then anyway, already writing another check,
Slipping it in the envelope, knowing they’ll
Waste some of it on sending me a,
‘Thank you very much for your generous support Mr. Sheldon,’ letter,
No matter how little I want to be thanked by them or anyone else.
I whisper an apology to the people I’m helping
For the fact that they need help.
For instance, last night I apologized to the boy in the letter for the fact that
He found himself born into a world that said
He could only have his tooth fixed,
The one that kept him awake all night crying from the pain,
If a certain Mr. Robert Sheldon felt like sending a check one fine day,
Instead of buying a Blu-Ray machine for himself.
I apologized for our failure.

But lest you get the wrong impression, that’s not all I do.
Trust me, I like to watch porn and jerk off as much as the next guy.
Believe me, when you stop leaving the house, you get less concerned
About what your credit card statement looks like.
I don’t have the right connections, I’m getting older you see,
So I pay for the good channels and for access to a few fine websites.
Rumor has it you can get great free porn on the internet,
But I swear I can’t find it.
Just a bunch of fuzzy, twenty-second videos from what I can see.
And I don’t know about you, but I need more than twenty seconds
To take care of my business, if you know what I mean.
I sometimes think about asking some of the younger guys in the building,
If I happen to run across them in the laundry room or by the mailboxes,
Where they go to get high quality free porn,
But that would probably just be weird.
They mostly try to ignore me as it is,
Even without me asking such personal questions.
I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable, by the way.
It’s natural stuff I do, nothing sick. A man’s got needs, you know?

But mostly I just watch the Weather Channel.
There’s something almost hypnotizing about that place.
Like, I can see that it’s dark outside through the blinds,
I can hear it whipping against the panes and
I can even smell it on the air,
But it just doesn’t seem to really be raining out there
Until I see the weather forecast saying so.
Isn’t that something?
And I also see floods in the Midwest,
Late season ice storms in Maine,
Tornadoes in Texas,
Mudslides in California,
Hurricane warnings in Miami,
And sunshine, sunshine, sunshine for once in Seattle!
I always give a little cheer when that happens. Poor bastards.
It makes me feel involved in what’s happening to the people out there,
In a way that I just can’t feel when I watch the regular news.
The weather, and people’s struggle with extreme versions of it,
Is just so much more personal to me for some reason.

But it’s a thunderstorm here in DC that really gets me excited.
I’m always on the lookout for those.
You don’t have to go outside for them; they come in and get you.
And those thunderstorms always remind me, in a pleasantly visceral way,
Of old ex-girlfriends I dated while in my twenties.
In truth, that’s probably the biggest reason I love the storms so much.
It isn’t nostalgia really; it’s just a sensation in my bones
That rolls in with the electricity and quickens my blood.
I’m actually transported back, by feeling, to certain places.
Like the balcony on P Street, drinking beers and smoking,
Before and after sweaty trips to her bedroom in the summer heat.
I can practically smell the cigarettes and sex,
Sitting by the window in my apartment, when the thunder booms
And the fizzing sound of hard rain through leaves saturates the air.
Or standing in the middle of Wisconsin Avenue in the middle of the night,
Finally sharing that first kiss I’d been after for so long,
Standing tightly wound up in arms, indifferent to the downpour around us.
Or laid out on the living room floor with the windows open,
Letting the flashes crash around us as we tangled until we were sore.
It’s not nostalgia because it doesn’t make me sad or melancholic,
Even though those days are so far behind me, long rusted in my memory.
It just makes me feel content. Content that I’ve lived,
Even if it was a long time ago.

So no, I don’t harbor illusions about myself and what I’m doing now.
I’m waiting to die and I’m trying to do it in the greatest degree of
Physical and moral comfort that I can manage.
I’m healthy and not too old, so it’ll probably be a while
(Several years at least, maybe even a decade or two),
But that’s okay with me. I’m a patient man.
Barring nuclear annihilation or other, lesser catastrophes
Like the one from earlier last night,
I should have plenty more weather to enjoy
And plenty more checks to send off before I kick the bucket
And the rest of my wad disperses among the charities of my choice.
I like the way I’m situated now and my motto is,
“Loneliness is for the dull and dim.”

Though now I feel I should be honest and admit that sometimes
I do scream for myself. At least a little bit for myself, anyway.
It’s usually times when I’m putting more
Sadness than anger into my screams.
It’s then that I feel more merciful and allow that I’m subject to this cruelty
And suffering and death, too, and that it’s okay to share in the scream.
I can almost feel that I, too,
Deserve an apology from someone, somewhere.
But I never allow myself self-pity and I ask that you do the same,
For me and for yourself. It’s important, damn it.
I’m really quite lucky at this point, having so little left to lose.
It’s true freedom and anyone with an iota of wisdom will tell you so.

But about earlier last night. Incident in the bathroom.
I started washing my hands and a house centipede, an enormous one,
Crawled out of the drain right underneath my rubbing hands.
It must have been hiding down there and tried to escape
Once the water started flowing down over it.
Now, for some context, I loathe these things.
If you’ve never seen one, Google image it (see, I’m not that old),
But brace yourself; they’re nasty looking.
They have a very painful bite, I’ve read
(Luckily, I’ve never had to find out first hand).
They’ve got tons of legs, are fast moving
And I swear they’re intelligent beings.
I once saw one on the wall out of the corner of my eye,
And it must have been motionless for a while
Or I would have noticed it sooner,
But just as I fully turned to look at it,
The thing made a beeline for the corner!
What kind of an invertebrate knows when
Someone’s looking at it from across the room?
Anyway, these things already skeeve me out,
But this was just the ultimate horror,
The last thing I was expecting post-urination.
I made some kind of animal moaning sound and leapt back,
My heart doing somersaults and back flips like it was going for the gold.
Now this king of house centipedes is trying to climb up out of the sink,
But the sides are too smooth and it keeps falling back down,
So I suddenly have the presence of mind to reach in and splash water on it,
To push it back down to the drain and keep it from escaping.
It goes half in the drain, and I’ll tell you, I must have been working on an
Instinctual level, because I slammed down
The flagpole and made the stopper
Crash down on the thing, crushing it
And making the sink start to fill with water.
I turned the faucet up to as hot as it would go and stepped back,
Pacing around the entrance to the bathroom, trembling with adrenaline and
Whispering, “That must have got him,” over and over again,
Until the room was getting steamed up and the sink was going to overflow.
Gathering myself, I stepped in and let the sink slowly drain.
Sure enough, the thing was dead, all crumpled up.
But as relief washed over me, guilt seeped in, too.
I wasn’t just shocked and scared;
I had truly hated that centipede for a few minutes.
I took joy in knowing that it was being scalded, smashed and drowned.
As far as I thought I’d come in giving up the old feelings that led to hate
And bitterness, and vengefulness and rage,
For all my efforts at being a venerable old Buddha,
Transcending to some other, more serene mortal plane,
Benignly wasting my final years in a cloud of memory and easy charity,
I’d just backslid because a thing the size of my finger had frightened me.

So I cleaned up the body with a ceremonial flush
And did some screaming for myself and for the world.
And then I wrote that check to help fund some free clinics,
And apologized to that young boy for the world we live in.
And then I dreamed about warm summer sex,
Followed up by nuclear annihilation.

The Singularity

I facetiously wanted to call this one "Nerd Love," but I don't want to be mean to it or take away from the real emotion contained within. It's hard for me to take seriously "love poems" that aren't in some way sad, but I think there is still enough complexity of feeling in this one for it to pass my laugh test. Not that I'm an emo teenager or some hyper-cynic that thinks all love is inevitably tragic, just that I think that two humans in love is one of the funniest things in existence (that's a compliment love, so please take it that way). Love and happiness are inextricably linked with laughter in my mind, so, in their pure forms, they will always be funny to me.

Red lips are an exaggeration.
Pale crescents fill the universe,
All that matters or could matter.
Breathing through wide gulfs,
We met across infinite distances,
Now drawn down to the closest
Intimacy in an instant,
So close that our air intermingles,
And our vision can only wander,
From cheek, to lips, to eyes, to neck.
Time crystallizes around us;
It crinkles apart like half-made ice
As my hand touches your hair,
Impossibly smooth between my fingers.
Everything else is smoke and buzzing,
Out on the edge of perception,
Inconsequential.
This unbearable separation finally ends,
As the event horizon stretches to meet
Two bodies hurtling toward each other,
Bending space and time at the speed of light.
I plunge into the singularity of the kiss,
Shedding my mass,
Becoming pure energy,
Lost in the blackness,
With a secret fear of an end to forever.

Fragments

As I take your cold hand in mine,
And stare into the emptiness,
I know that I may never see you again,
Though this is how I will always remember you:
Your long winter coat concealing the body
That never was a mystery to me,
Not even the first time my hand,
Came to rest on your bare hip,
Smooth gray curves in the moonlight;
Your eyes unfocused under knitted brows,
Contemplating not the windswept landscape before us,
But the inner turmoil you keep securely contained,
Behind a meshwork of steel and nerve;
Your voice as you almost sing the words to me,
“We are people who still really feel,
And that is why we are here now;”
Your lips dry and cracked and slightly parted,
As if you were about to speak again,
The words stolen and swept out to sea.

The rest of you is just fragments,
Scenes from another life I probably
Dreamed while sleeping on a train.
The real is inseparable from the desired,
And my future is fraught with imagination.

You release my hand and withdraw
Without a sound; magnets under my skin
Involuntarily pull me toward your mass,
But I anchor my feet and do not turn my head.
I am left with the cry of gulls and the music
Of the internal, eternal struggle of opposites,
Pulling columns down as they wage their war,
Somewhere deep in my frozen, laboring lungs.

My eyes close and I try to remember,
Another time, one I am sure once existed,
Where softness was also a non-tactile feeling
And strength was a word we shared,
But now it is just fragments.

The District

Sleeping under anvils she lies prone,
Curled up with pain as companion,
Feeling the hammer blows pushing her
Further under, sinking into the earth.

I watch and feel the weight press on me from afar.
Why does the world have me riveted here,
While you wish for the peace of death there?
It is a simple, easy answer that
Echoes across the concrete chasms
Of a society that chooses murdering
Children over caring for children.

Less than a mile from where she lies,
Three schools bustle with thousands of students;
Their textbooks leer dumbly, older than their parents,
And the asbestos grins lecherously from within the rotting walls.
Many of these kids will not finish school or go to college.
Many have no doctor for when they are sick.
Some will be murdered and taken to the grave.
Some will be murderers and taken to jail.
Some will be imprisoned for selling drugs.
Some will be beaten for talking back to a cop.
Some will be taken away by an overdose.
Some will be taken away by crossfire.
Some will be taken away by accident.
None are thought of within the halls of power,
Which stand very few miles from where my love lies.

Gleaming marble structures and towering monuments
Take no more heed of our suffering than do
The men and women of power that
Inhabit the maze we call home.
War memorials multiply
Yet none stand here
For the lives that
Were taken by
Greed and
Neglect.

In bed, she shudders and props up the infinite weight of loneliness.
Nearby, a child stumbles uphill, facing a never-ending walk home.
Lost somewhere in the maze, I struggle to swim through drying cement.

The Loudspeaker

The loudspeaker attached to the streetlamp on the corner awakened with a crackle of static and a series of raking, electrically buzzing beeps. One, two, three, four, five, each lasting three and a half seconds. A soft, feminine voice spoke clearly into the empty streets, her voice echoing calmly downwind.

“This information notice is for all citizens of the City of New York and serves to comply with the Proper Accounting Transparency and Recorded Information Act. On the morning of December 4th, two years ago, citizen Robert Baumann, hereafter referred to as citizen Baumann, was identified as an enemy combatant. Upon exiting his apartment building in the Queens borough, citizen Baumann was disabled by an aerial drone and taken into custody by law enforcement agents.

“We would like to take this opportunity to assure all citizens that electrical discharges from aerial drones and law enforcement agents are designed merely to incapacitate a target and pose no health risk to the human organism. Please, do not run if you witness an aerial drone deploying incapacitation rounds in your neighborhood. Flight may lead to an authorized escalation in the level of force to be used in your apprehension. Simply place your hands behind your head, kneel down where you are and wait for a law enforcement agent to give you further instructions.

“Citizen Baumann was conscious and responsive when he arrived for processing and interrogation approximately [beeeeeeeep] later at [beeeeeeeep] facility. National security authorities applied Department of Justice approved enhanced interrogation techniques on citizen Baumann in order to obtain his cooperation in an investigation. These techniques were continued for the next 467 days, as citizen Baumann refused to yield actionable intelligence, but were suspended at that point because a precipitous decline in citizen Baumann’s vital signs were detected.

“After a [beeep] hour recuperation stand-down, clearance was given by medical professionals and the interrogation program was resumed. Eight days after the resumption of the interrogation program, citizen Baumann was found unresponsive in his detention cell at 04:57 am and efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. Citizen Baumann’s body was kept on site pending an autopsy, which later determined his death to be a result of natural causes.

“This morning a National Security Court ruled that the classification of citizen Baumann as an enemy combatant was not correct. Citizen Baumann has been cleared of all suspicion of terrorism and his body is now being returned to his next of kin for burial. The United States government apologizes for this error and assures all citizens that every effort is being made to minimize such classification errors in the future. Remember, safety is everyone’s responsibility.”

With a hiss, followed by a momentary squeal of feedback, the loudspeaker fell silent.

The wind howled around the quiet, gray apartment blocks for fifteen seconds before the loudspeaker awakened again with a crackle of static and a series of raking, electrically buzzing beeps. One, two, three, four, five, each lasting three and a half seconds. A soft, feminine voice spoke clearly into the empty streets, her voice echoing calmly downwind.

“This information notice is for all citizens of the City of New York and serves to comply with the Proper Accounting Transparency and Recorded Information Act. On the morning of March 24th, this year, citizen Clara Bonilla, hereafter referred to as citizen Bonilla, was identified as an enemy combatant and lethal force was used in her apprehension. National security authorities confirmed…”

And the loudspeaker rolled on through the afternoon, into the evening twilight, stopping only for its fifteen-second breaks. When darkness fell, curfew began and speakers all over the city went silent. Silent until tomorrow, when they would rejoin their public duty at dawn, satisfying the citizen’s right to know.

Mada | Adam

Mada and Adam stand under the
Buzzing MTA sign to use the ATM.

Mada looks in the tiny mirror and sees
Adam over her shoulder, his face blank.

Cubby Holes

On my way home,
Waiting for the 42 bus,
Looking over across K Street,
I stared into a massive block of cubic building,
Lit from the inside,
The yellow light broken by black lines
Running up and down, back and forth
Forming squares over its face.
I was reminded of cubby holes,
Like the kind I’d leave my sneakers in,
When I went to go play in the ball pit as a child.
But before me I saw offices,
Much like the one I had just left,
And I was compelled to wonder why
I spend eight, nine, ten, twelve hours a day
Living in a cubby hole;
Wondering if there is a ball pit I could be playing in, instead.

The Knock at the Door

Lisa pins the holly up on the wall in just the right place.
“That’s where Dan would hang it,” she thinks with pride.
January 12th is the magical date;
The day when everything will finally be set right.
She hums as she goes about her work, decorating the house
For the Christmas that is just around the corner.
Less than a month now until everything will be okay.
The radio is playing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
And that is what Lisa is humming, she realizes.
It was unconscious for a while, as she was concentrating
Quite hard on getting the star to stand up straight on the top
Of the Christmas tree, jangling its lights and ornaments.
All the effort is silly of course, as Dan won’t be home for Christmas,
But she’s going to make sure that everything is just perfect.
When he comes back on January 12th,
He’ll see the place lit up like Times Square in celebration
Of his homecoming and return to Lisa’s bed and arms.
They’ll have the holiday together, even if they’re late.

It’s quiet in the house without him, but not for much longer.
He seemed so tired when she talked to him on the webcam
This Wednesday, his face lined and his voice dragging.
But he also sounded so happy; he was ready for it to be over.
He was ready to come home to her, to be done with duty.
“Christmas in Kandahar, babe. I’d rather be with you.”
Dan is her inspiration, the reason she keeps going;
Why she is able to run their ailing store by herself;
How she can still smile when the sun doesn’t shine all day;
What she looks forward to when things seem impossibly cruel.
No one else could make her feel that way, and that is fine.
There is no need for anyone else as long as his laugh is hers.

With a light leap, Lisa swings away from the tree to check on the oven
Where the sugar cookies are almost ready to come out to cool,
But there is a knock at the door.
“It must be Dan’s parents. They’re a little early, but that’s like them.”
Diverted from the kitchen, she sashays to the front door,
Glad to talk to Dan’s mother especially, as she wants her advice on a gift.
Lisa pulls the door open with a flourish and is surprised to see
Two men in green on the porch, standing tall and resolute.
The world becomes unglued as they ask if she is Mrs. Lisa Kerwin.
Her whispered, “Yes,” is almost redundant as the taller man states,
“The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express
His deep regret that your husband was killed in action…”
Nothing is real except for the radio, where Bing Crosby sings
With obscene cheer, “I’ll be home for Christmas,
If only in my dreams.”