December 2022
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
wexelblatt@verizon.net
Bio Note: I live near Boston and teach at Boston University.
Author's Note: The poem below was inspired by a fine, decent, talented, conscientious man who has, for all the many years I’ve known him, been afflicted with anxiety, usually more spiritual and moral than clinical or financial. I once joked that he seemed to have a factory pumping out worries. I saw him recently. My friend is as upright and decent as ever, and just as anxious.
Author's Note: The poem below was inspired by a fine, decent, talented, conscientious man who has, for all the many years I’ve known him, been afflicted with anxiety, usually more spiritual and moral than clinical or financial. I once joked that he seemed to have a factory pumping out worries. I saw him recently. My friend is as upright and decent as ever, and just as anxious.
Anxiety Factory
I’ve never known him fretless, unapprehensive, free of worry.
Plein de soin when he visited Paris, in Vienna voller Fürsorge.
Were he born Roman, equestrian or plebian, he’d be
plena cura—Carthaginians, a failed harvest in Egypt, yet
more civil war, Huns, a restless wife shopping for henbane.
Occasions aren’t scarce—a divorce, the kids, a psychotic
girlfriend, neurotic second wife, fishy looks at work, his
IRA, the next vacation, nuclear and climate bombs, black
mold in the basement, needing to pee four times a night.
The busy little plant features lathes and forges, cogs and presses,
die cutters, extruders, nozzles, flanges, a furnace with a miniature
smokestack pumping angst straight into the large intestine.
Though invisible even to an MRI, I picture the works nestled
a smidgin right of his stomach, a tad left of the gallbladder.
The factory never closes down, switches shifts, takes no breaks.
Overnight, it churns out nightmares, horrors and catastrophes
fabricated from memories, burritos, pad thai, shrimp scampi.
It won’t rest on a Sabbath or high holiday, let alone a long
weekend. The thing is autochthonous, automated, self-lubricating,
ununionized and warranted to work unremittingly for life.
©2022 Robert Wexelblatt
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