New Post: Tom C. Hunley, Finalist, Learning to Cope Prize

God’s Lonely Man

          Film Student in Peking: What do I do with the loneliness?

            Martin Scorsese: Very often I try to  put it into the work.

            Film student (a few days later): I tried putting it into the work, but it doesn’t go away.

            Scorsese: No, it doesn’t go away. There’s no magic cure.” – Scorcese on Scorcese, David

            Thompson and Ian Christie, eds.)

I’m the only one here. My name is Travis, Travis B.

I’m a lonely man, and I’m a sleepless man, a confused man.

Are you talking to me? Will you please talk to me?

I believe my stomach may be riddled with cancer.

My yellow cab gets washed by a gushing fire hydrant.

A car backfires – I’m back in Nam, ducking Charlie.

I pop tranquilizers and wet my cereal with peach brandy.

I’m the only one here. My name is Travis, Travis B.

The prostituted Times Square night is lit by bodies

Pressing together like match heads and cement. Damn,

How I’d like to be a heavy rain that washes this city,

But I’m just a lonely man, a sleepless man, a confused man.

I took this lovely angel, Betsy, to see Swedish Marriage Manual,

But she scuttered into someone else’s cab. Oh Betsy!

There’s so much I can’t quite say, but I know you’d understand.

Are you talking to me? Will you please talk to me?

Sweet Iris, a 12-year-old whore, jumped in my back seat,

Followed by her pimp, Sport, who wore an Indian headband.

He grabbed her arm and tossed me a balled up twenty.

I believe my stomach may be riddled with cancer.

The morning sunlight nearly blinds me. I walk in a trance.

How did this loneliness get in me? Do I drink it in my coffee?

It wants to come out, like steam billowing from a manhole.

Are you talking to me? Are you pointing that .38 at me?

I’m the only one here.

Tom C. Hunley

Tom C. Hunley is a professor in the MFA/BA Creative Writing programs at Western Kentucky University, the director of Steel Toe Books, and the lead singer/guitarist of Night of the Living Dead Poets Society and Dr. Tom and the Mini-Mes. His poetry collections include PLUNK (Wayne State College Press 2015) and THE STATE THAT SPRINGFIELD IS IN (Split Lip Press 2016). In 2015 Southern Illinois University press published CREATIVE WRITING PEDAGOGIES FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, an essay collection that he co-edited with Alexandria Peary.