the Sadness

I study writing at a private college, I do

my homework on my bed under a yellow light

before the monsters come out at night. I recite

poetry for fun. It's not. I read the Sad Sacks.

They know more about what's what.

On nights when the dancing girls stumble away

happily out my window and I sit there, a good girl

between the dark and the yellow light--

When the sleeping pills are gone and Jameson

left days ago, I call my favorite drunk; he's always home. 

When I am sad I seek out the Sadder.
My therapist says this is wrong, I should listen
not to weeping guitars, but jingles,
read not Plath but Whitman.
What she doesn't know is that the happier things
are so much sadder, like some frowning

clown in tatters, lugging his feet along with the marching band
in afternoon parades.

See, the Sadness is not a pinprick against the heart
but a chorus of many symbols crashing.
And in the parade of your life--
you drag on and on, a shrunken shadow

behind, until you're over.

That's what the Sad Sacks are talking about:
the happiness will always leave you;
the Sadness never will.