ANNIE'S TELLING ME (Verlaine)

Monotony, cliches. A nervous day? Cafe. They
approach each other as voices, incapable of making
words mean other than what they could mean. It is not
a crisis or moment of self-flattery. There are sometimes
reminders of what she called "the useless life", what
he called "eternity". Wet are the eyes and the smiles.
That is what is remembered presently. Along with the joy
of discovering a new incompetence or abbreviation.
annie's telling me: the crashing waves upon the shore
...are they telling you they're what you were before? Well,
you can go to sleep just once but you wake up fifteen times.
Annie's tellin me... it's like a factory... cranking out them
parts... all the labors of love sure take a lot of heart
annie's tellin me... l like them trite descriptions she said.
Soft lights revolve on the cracked -up walls. annie's tellin me
no one knows where they come from... it's like a factory.
(...she has ideas... ideas about everything...) Back in that
"factory", annie's tellin me, everyman is king.