A Look Ahead at the Event Horizon

First the indignities of middle age

the post-menopausal paunch

the sneeze incontinence.

Then the outrage that you,

you of all people should have to--

so talented/beautiful/accomplished/young--

should have to put up with this loss,

this invisibility.

Then the self-pity.

Oh, woe. Woe, indeed.

You should not have to suffer this,

this inevitability, not you.

Then a sudden slump into something

beyond despair,

more like dissolution, but dissolution

laced with anger at the living.

Why aren't they saving you from

this awful fate? It's so unfair!

They get to live, you have to die

and soon.

No one told you this

except they did.

But you knew you were exceptional

the only one it would not happen to

you've been right so long

it literally kills you to be so wrong.

Submissions

Her Submission                            His Submission

Who does he think                            Who does she think

He is, anyway?                            She is, anyway?

Why does he keep                            To ask him to

Telling her what to                            Account for his

Do every morning,                            Whereabouts, every

Like she doesn't                            Minute of every day

Understand the directions:            And just stand for it.

How to make                                    A man could stand up

Toast, for pity's sake?                    A man could just walk away

To call his mother,                            A man could wander out and

(Like she's ever been                    Never come back.

Anything but nice                            When he leaves here,

To the cranky old thing)                    He wants a strict policy of

As if her love for                            Don't ask, don't tell,

Him could be boiled                    And then he could relax.

Down to "Love me,                            Relax enough to come home

Do what I tell you to do" or            And report the

"Love me, be how                            Headlines, if not

I want you to be."                            Every bead in between

Isn't the point that she                    He's here, isn't he?

Loves him?                                    If she could just wait

That she doesn't always                    One goddamned minute

Do what he says, but                    Until he brings it up

Stays here to hear him                    Himself,

Ask again.                                    He'd tell her.

The Sunny Side of the Street

I've been walking my whole life on this side

The sunny side

I can see you on the other side, our head

Hanging down, muttering to yourself.

I'm waving to you

Don't you see me?

Can't you see me waving to you?

Hoping for your company on this side of the street

I'm trying to get your attention

Not because I need you to look at me

To understand my own existence. No.

You look interesting to me, your mutterings

Chime in my ears like music--I'd like to hear more.

But my arms are getting tired, I'm still waving

And you're still ignoring me.

I come over to your side.

It's beautiful here. The snow drifts are necessarily

Higher, the shadows cast arcane patterns in blue

It's lovely and perplexing.

I see why you want to puzzle out its meaning

But I'm telling you, the patterns are easier to decode

From the sunny side.

Come on over, I beg of you

I don't want to leave you here

But I can not stay too long

I issue my invitation to come across the street

With me. From there, we can laugh about how

Dark and mysterious this shadowed side is,

Without being pulled further into its grip.

Drifts become ruts, become trenches,

Then you're lost.

If I pull on your arm and drag you across

The street, will you be mad at me?

You say you can't help it, it's chemical

You think I don't understand how it feels.

But you are the one who lets bad habits

And chemistry take the blame for your own misery.

I understand that if I love you and I want you

To cross over with me and you won't come, and

I leave you here on your own, you'll blame me:

I clearly didn't love you enough to sacrifice 

My own happiness on the altar of your pain.

So I cross back to the sunny side

I'm watching you from here

I'm waving from time to time, come on over,

I miss you

No, I can't come back to your side. I'm sorry.

Here

I don't know about your house, Acrylic, adjunct

But ours is filled with words. Bereft, breakfast

Words on papers                                                Cobbled up, coin

Papers in piles,                                                   Distal, deviltry

Piles piled on piles, splayed fanwise. Eggplant, ego

Words in books,                                                 Fanlight, filter

Books on shelves,                                              Gorgon, gesso

Shelves against every wall. Half a lump, heifer

"It's a library in here!" a visitor said. Indigent, indigo

But those are just the trapped words Juniper, jostled

The pinned down words                                     Kick the can, kola nut

The words we use to start the                                  Liberate, lemonade

Living flow of new words,

"Did you read this? What'd you think?" Mango, mutton chop

A blizzard in here some days. Nightshade--the deadly kind

A swirling braiding river                                    Oboe, oval, Ouagadougou

A river that leads down to the coast Pancake, pestilence

A place on the coast not shown on maps, Quisling, quarknet

A place, no matter how you spell it Ratcheting, rivals

That means just one thing: Sadly, sawing
                                                                 All those Tinker Toys

If you don't know what that is, Unusual uvulas

Go back and listen again, more Veering vapidly

Carefully this time                                              Why? Where? What?

Look it up in the OED Xenophobia

Under L.                                                            Yellowing, yammering

                                                                         zzzzzzzz--huh?--zzzzzzzzzzz

Clear Memory

I've lived in your world long enough,

Heard your version of events--

Tried my hardest to countenance

Them, and failed.

I saw what you meant,

That you meant what you said

To be self-evident, to have one

Possible meaning only.

That your values, as you call them,

Leave no room for any of my

Talents, or efforts, constantly narrowing

The ledge I'm allowed to stand on.

You want the world to be your world,

To stay static on that day you

Understood everything and fixed it in

Your mind.

But it has not stopped still,

It has left you behind.

You want me to remain here with you

As the world goes on, leaves you in

Its wake. I see your loneliness.

You've never been without me.

But I have had to swim away into

The ocean currents on my own,

Paddle away from the ledge you've

Claimed, all the while you've called me

Back: Don't go, you've said, don't

Leave me here.

But I must.

The ledge is gone.

In Memory of Heath Ledger

What was acting and what were his real feelings,

Even he was losing hold of his little

Peach pit of self

That allowed him to do extraordinary things

With his face and body.

Jack Nicholson warned him

Nothing he could tell Heath about how to ply his craft,

But what he could tell Heath was

There's a switch

A switch inside you have to learn to flip

Flip on: act

Flip off: live

Heath, his gift so raw and new and outsized

Couldn't find that switch in time

He didn't want to be the Joker any more but

The mask had grown over his face,

Hardened.

This is the soul danger for all actors.

When you stop pretending and really act

You're in big trouble.

Heath's face in Brokeback:

The moment he pulls Jake by the vest into the outdoor stairwell

And buries it, that Rock of Gibraltar, into Jake's.

Their connection is as deep and physical as the Marianas Trench

And just as articulate.

Heath pulls away and in less than ten seconds he gives us Ennis' fear of discovery

Regret, desire, pent-up need, his delight that his love is still reciprocated. 

He pats, he pulls away, he brushes Jake's hands away, his forehead rubs Jake's,

Like a horse would, he stumbles away tucking in his shirt and volumes have been spoken

In their language.

How hard it must be to live at that peak

All day, every day

To have thousands, millions even,

Desiring that look from you, at them

How glorious for us, his audience

How exhausting for Heath

He could make us feel anything

It made him want to stop feeling.

Where is that switch, Jack?

I need to find it, too.

Ode to Emergent Properties

Let us talk about life.

There will be plenty of time

The other side of the event horizon

To discuss the implications of crossing

That border.

How can we live knowing we will die?

Try asking a rock, a boulder, a mountain

How the other possibility feels.

It takes us so long, chasing after answers to the

Wrong questions, to finally formulate

Right ones. We then have little time

Left to contemplate the wording.

We are lizards so long, sunning ourselves to get

Our body temperature up. Then squirrels, running and

Chattering and fighting to store the most acorns. Then

Building and worshipping and caressing the past, or

Illusions, or Beauty.

Beauty is an emergent property. An unanswerable one.

The peculiarly delicate antennae needed to perceive it--

Also an emergent property.

We do not yet know what else will emerge

From the sum total of all our emergent properties.

But think exponential, not linear.

We know how to do so many things that we choose

Not to do.

It is so easy to love

This life.

It is so hard to spurn

Each other. So costly to punish others for not doing

What you are not doing either.

Listen. Witness. Share the story, which spreads the pain so thin that it can

Break, like a film of ice over a muddy puddle.

Listen again.

Repeat.