(A lone voice whispers)
Like a The Diary Letter of Billy Goldstein letter sent to
To Kill a Mockingbird
Reminding me
Of a paranoid
Holden Caulfield
Narrating his sad life away
In the legendary
Catcher in the Rye
I turned left and
Wandered home
Feeling lost
Like a reformed
Billy Pilgrim
After my saying my painful goodbyes
To a version of surviving Schlachthof-fünf
Or in English
Slaughterhouse 5
After love and heartbreak
Bombarded me
With waves of pain
Singing relentlessly like
The Bee Gees
Legendary
Staying Alive
I bought lily-white flowers
In the early morning rain
For my new version of Jane Gallagher
On the way
To her home
On Fifth and Main
Nancy Brossard
The nurse
Who helped pull me out
Of Depression's tight grip
At Oregon State Hospital
With deep talks
As we walked
Around its bleak backyards
Where I fought the head
Of its ward and state
An authoritarian
Who strutted about like
Nurse Mildred Ratched
I picked her favorites
Of course
Something real fancy
Nothing cheap
From the necropolis
Of green and golden leaves
Down the street
From a florist
called Fahrenheit Four
But when a familiar stranger
Met me at its blue doors
As I looked in the silver mirror
Someone who looked like me
Calling himself
The stranger who sleeps within
Something sinister
Made me shiver
When he said
"Nice flowers
Real Fancy
Are they for our Nancy?"
Thinking inwardly
Was Reality giving me its first of many humanitarian lessons
As I fled
Like an anxious
Stuttering Billy Bibbit
For me to worship a new form of love
Reminiscent like
That imaginary beast
In the Lord of the Flies
Before I too spiraled out of control and died
Was it beyond my remit
Lord
I looked to the skies
And pitifully cried
Who would save my soul now
(C)
Copyright John Duffy
Incorporating banned books into a poem. So much fun. Salute.
Can you spot them?
