I always knew Room Service was nothing like what you think
it is. Many are the times when I ‘ve waited, hours it seemed
in this same damn hotel room, for a meal or a knock,
a distraction from this boredom we call life, our world.
I wait in a room too much like the one where I was born,
with my Gladstone bag and think that this must be eternity,
the longest wait, a time when time no longer matters,
and when matter no longer matters. Evidently, contradictorily,
the longer the wait, the better the service. “Born in a hotel room –
and God damn it – died in a hotel room”.
Eugene Gladstone O’Neill
The author volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and was, until Covid, the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. He remains the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and provided the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005), performed 4 times to date. Recently, he published his 160th prose poem since 2016.