Dorothy Parker

Today's poem (in honor of National Poetry Month) is brought to you by the Divine Dorothy Parker. She's quite the hoot; she's on my list of people throughout history whom I would invite to dinner, the others being Oscar Wilde, Leonardo DaVinci, Gertrude Stein, Thomas Jefferson, Rimbaud, Kathleen Hanna, Eddie Izzard, Mae West, and a toss-up between Tennessee Williams and Jake Gyllenhaal (scantily clad, of course).

(grins)

According to this site, before continuing on to the poem, you should find a French cigarette with an ivory cigarette holder (cloche optional). Dorothy Parker, is, at her core, supererogatorily melodramatic. The poem should be read in a sarcastic contralto, eyebrows arched, r's rolled in an Eastern European style. You cannot read Dorothy Parker properly without melodramatizing yourself. (I wish melodramatizing were a real word.)

Symptom Recital.

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.