“Platitudes” - A Poem by James Sharpe

Platitudes

Ruins of a Letter from Hemingway to Fitzgerald during the Quarantine

That terrible mood of depression
     I’ll bet it’s damned good—

and when you get these crying drunks
     and start to tell them
                                        you’re not burned out
it’ll be sad enough.

I’ll tell you all I know—
     …whom slept with who and whom
before or after whom…
     of whether it’s any good or not
anything you need to know

                                it’ll be sad enough.

A discouraging time to work—
you don’t feel death coming on the way
     it does in the fall—we’re not peaches

     That doesn’t mean 
you get rotten… a gun is better 
     worn and with bloom
               off—so is a saddle—People too

by God. You lose
                             everything that is fresh and 
                             everything that is easy

You just have to go on
                                   when it is worst and most helpless…
          You’re not burned out and you know

what is known as The Artist’s Reward.

these crying drunks…
     plenty to use,
                           when you start to tell them
                           just keep on and go through with it now
there is only one thing to do and that is go
straight on through to the end of the damned thing,

            for Christ’s sake,

amend it—
                    if this is a dull and shitty letter
it is only because I felt

—am so damned fond of you and
     whenever you try to tell anybody anything
about working or “life” 
                                       it is always bloody

James Ogden Sharpe is a caregiver in Chicago completing an English Masters in Rhetorical Studies. He'll be reading Foucault, Derrida, and Baudrillard for the duration of the quarantine, so say a prayer. He writes about caregiving and confessing Christ at www.aeriste.com