THE SADDEST MAN ON EARTH… ignored how the rain felt as he left home for the last time Wore down his boot heels searching for the woman of his dreams, but never understood that life is a woman Lived in a town where sadness was illegal and where grinning cops ticketed his face so often that he lost his license to cry The Saddest man on earth tuned guitars but couldn’t play them, cheated the IRS of his own refund, fathered a child who thought she saw him in perfect strangers yet didn’t recognize him face to face I met him once in a bar toasting the mirror with his stare He had come south to start life over He was a Mozart of silence by Alan Kaufman You can find this poem in — The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
