LAMENTATIONS

by David Eide

In lieu of writing the novels of you, the poet keeps a journal to record the precise changes of his own spirit as time begins to dominate him and as he loses his fine dreams.

He readies himself for a test, a series of tests that will determine whether he will have good judgment or the desire to make bad ones. Standing next to the great Tower where the businessmen go he remembers feeling that he was separated from the boy of hi aspirations by a secreted fluid. The fluid that names the strangers that pass by him; the characters of his novels that he burns to write. "When," he thinks, "I am bored of you I will not longer want to depict you. You bore me as you divide into those who know and those who don't care to know." They struggle for control over the poets fiction.

Just as suddenly he hears an accident at the intersection and watches the people leap to save those trapped in a car. They move quickly and without regard for their safety. The poet comes to the conclusion that the people are better than he is. That he must use his privileged position to free the people, free the soul of the people through astounding works.