GEORGE ZANCOLA
GEORGE ZANCOLA // 42
TWO POEMS IN OBSERVANCE OF MY LONELINESS I’m writing because the TED Talks didn’t help, and it’s late, and there is no cable, and I’m tired. And there is no window to the outside world, and I’m thinking the starry scenes above must be screaming like a silence, or some other sheer mad poetry ripping within me. And like bravado in solitude, the voices persist in my monotone mania. By scientific jargon, the confinement is given title with a hell-bound twist on words like darkness, and terms like schizophrenic are brokered by inappropriate pronouns, and the poet in me is the lover in me, and both entities are in disconnect. No one could see me, and I could not shine in that light, And I sought the improbable as wonder fractured into many eyes, with no escape from the glare. To the watchman I cried loud enough to be heard, but he stared dead ahead into his own life. He would allow no one access to my room, except the nurse with a needle to stick in my arm. She had memorized a manual of efficiency. She was always on time. I couldn’t help but ask if hourly injections would redeem me from an inability to see light. And if they didn’t work, she said, there was shock treatment. I remember again the dance of the watchman, and the nurse. I recall the power moving through them, so hidden, obscene, and they witnessed the power that moved in me. I was frightened by the path they made into my solitude, and they were frightened, too.
