A Sad Child
A Sad Child
You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.
Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings.
Better than that,buy a hat.
Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.
Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,and
said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.
My darling, when it comesright down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,
and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside you head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,none of us is;
or else we all are.
Fire-Caught by Langston Hughes
The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.
