Dark Matter

Peace in the shrug
as you pull the first two red tomatoes
from your garden only to notice
they’ve been consumed
by bottom rot, the chagrin
you feel at not catching that
earlier, the casual toss into
the base of the fence,
the sudden awareness
of the nearly ripe cucumber 
hanging on that fence.

Peace in the shrug
at choices made, choices
that failed to pan out, choices
that went south or north or
every direction not on the compass
without an ounce of malice from anyone
involved, people living their lives
that did or did not intersect with 
your own, and the failure
of will, the utter failure of
all your will, then one day
the twenty dollar bill on the ground
at the foot of the pay phone where
you just spent your last dime, and that
was thirty years ago,
and how you remember it, and how
it pays you even today.

Peace in the shrug
at the end of the world, the end
of order and justice, the shambling
walk of the long-awaited Beast,
the pseudo-shambolic walk of the
Giant No, the edible flesh of 
Harmony, the smacking of 
thin jaws around the bones of
All You’ve Held Dear, and now
at the very close of the last snap
of those jaws the silence
of the sunset, and the dawn
beyond your own experience
that will come, that will surely
come even without you.

Peace in the shrug
as you pass, with your last thought
forming around how the seeds
from the tomatoes you tossed
will grow there in the dirt along the fence 
as long as rain falls and sun shines
next season, with or without you
there to moan, or wail,
or shrug such miracles off
as too little, too late, 
when they were never meant 
to feed you.

On the day I will likely die
I will not likely be heroic,
falling for a cause in a leaden rain,
protecting others with torn flesh.

It’s not at all clear today
how I’ll die on that day, of course,
but it likely won’t happen during
some last stand for my beliefs,
some war for my soul,
some battle I choose
or one that comes to me 
against my will
only to be grimly faced
by me as warrior,
me as fighter,
me as memorial in waiting.

I will likely not be mourned
by those who never knew me
but who may choose to honor me
based solely on what symbolic message
my death will send.  I will likely not
show up on an historic death list
afterward, commemorated yearly
by ceremonies, bowed heads
in a classroom or office,
a pretty average song
written by a pretty average songwriter
played on a pretty average radio station.

No.

When I go, I’ll likely be bedridden,
poor in dollars and cents and sense, 
shitting and pissing myself,
wispy under stiff yellowed sheets
in a stiff, puke-green room;

or just as likely
I’ll be in whatever passes for my own home
doing all those same things unattended;

or just as likely
I’ll pass in a crap car wrecked in some crap fashion
by my own mistake or deliberate hand.

When it’s done they’ll truck me off 
from wherever I happen to fall
as hazardous waste to be handled
with due care and precaution
until I’m disposed of. 

Fine, then.  Anyway it happens,
it will be fine.

It’s always a shell game at closing time;
you end up under some shifting cover
while someone tries to call out
the one that holds you, 
seeking a win from your presence
or your absence.
However that plays out on that day

what I was will be gone
in any one of a number
of likely or unlikely ways
that won’t matter to me.
I would like it to matter to someone.
I do what I can to make that so
but when that final shell
is at last raised,
what’s underneath
won’t be up to me.