Drowning In A River Of Liquid Assets Poem by Charles Wax

Part 1

Mulliken called.
As usual he wanted to read
a section from his
Treatise on the Profundities, vol. I: Evil.
He had been working
on this single volume
eleven years
projecting
thirty volumes necessary
to complete his work
His father
passed away when Mulliken was 16
leaving him a small fortune
millions
he didn’t know the exact amount
and he didn’t need to know the exact amount
all that he required were funds necessary
to cover his living expenses.
I met him at City College
where he wanted to be
a writer of fiction at the time
but he could never seem to finish
a tale
because he couldn’t handle misfortune
even in a story of his own creation.
His father had been a salesman,
cornering the entire Caribbean
and Latin American market
for Sony products in the early sixties.
Sadly for Mulliken the private jet
carrying his father, mother, and brother
went down somewhere
off the coast of Venezuela. His mother
had been in and out mental institutions
for most of her life,
as had been his brother
so at this point his father had
lost all faith in Western medicine
and was taking his wife
to a village somewhere in the Amazon
where a local Indian was reputed
to have magical powers.
Thus as sole heir
he inherited everything. The money
had been both a blessing
and a curse. A blessing
because it allowed him
to work uninterruptedly on his Treatise,
and a curse for the very same reason.

Part 2

While researching
Hitler’s death camps
Mulliken fell into a profound depression
which took the form of insomnia.
He couldn’t sleep
thus more and more sleeping pills
were required each night
to eke out a nap.
Needless to say
all his friends drifted away
because they couldn’t bear
to listen to him anymore.
I alone remained.
“What’s the second volume? ” I asked him.
“Depression, ” he said.
“The third? ” I asked.
“Joy, ” he said.
I immediately urged him
to put the final period on his 1,800 page manuscript
delineating all aspects of Evil
and launch into the third volume
putting off Depression until a later
time. Mulliken hinted
he would consider the advice,
then said, “Evil is the absence of Joy.”
I told him he was making progress.
The next week
he informed me pages 1,234 through 1,789
needed serious revision
and he would have to hold off
beginning
the Treatise on Joy.