I Forgot All About This Blog

So funny. Walking into an empty room and talking to oneself. My last post was five years ago, before the publication of my first book. Before I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Before I published, in a haste, a chapbook full of poems about death.

Now, I am circulating another manuscript collection. It's a good, coherent collection of poems. We will see.

I feel so good about my life today. I am a poet! Ha! What a great circumstance!

I love reading difficult books, listening to arcane classical music (and to schmaltzy popular music too,) learning a new language, taking careful walks, corresponding with friends, binge-streaming television and movies, drinking coffee, taking virtual tours of art museums, doing crossword puzzles, listening to academic podcasts, writing novels and poems, all of it.

It is a good life.

I will never be famous. I will never be rich. I will not change the world.

I have, like everyone else, made terrible mistakes of which I am horribly ashamed.

But I am also proud of the good work I have done.

Here's a poem from the manuscript I am shopping. (If you can help my book get published before I die, that would be very cool.)

Thankless

(first published in Badlands)

I know I should be miserable,

a sixty-year-old private man,

whose job it is to mop the floor

of this fashionable restaurant,

a man with an expensive education

and the easy command

of several languages.

But the late summer afternoon

buzzing outside the window glass

has cooled to a fragrant dusk,

and the meteor cars,

their headlights suddenly bright

in the darkening day,

chase each frantically

to the same uncertain eternity,

while the wet floor glistens and dries

like a piece of polished silver,

and I am satisfied with my task.

Keith Dunlap