Dark Matter

Trying to read
a book tonight
with my name on the cover;
title, “My Story.”

I don’t know
who wrote this but
most of the chapters seem
improbable.

I hear there’s
a movie being made from it.
I’m sure they won’t ask me to star
or consult me on the script.

Nonetheless, I’ll pay good money
to sit in a theater and watch.
Just me and my Milk Duds, just me and
my giant Coke, just me and some foods

that might kill me. That would be
something, all right. One for the sequel —
a man dies from self-inflicted damage
while watching himself on a screen.

Aren’t you dying to see yourself
fifty times larger than life? Isn’t that how
you want to go — I know I’m good
with it happening that way. It just feels right:

better than dying in bed, better than dying
a hero. When I’m gone you’ll have the fake book
and the lights camera action of the film
to remember me falsely by. Meanwhile,

I’ve got this book to finish and hope
that they cast a better person than I am
to play me. It won’t be hard. This book’s
a good lie, with good bones to work from;

exactly the type of book I’d write about myself
if I were inclined to do so, though I’m not.
I’m better as reader than writer. I’m better
in this than I ever was out there.

The disappearance of light this evening
was a comfort. I’ve fallen out
with the need for engagement, lying here
on the couch with nothing to do
but note every sign of aging
and disabling, no need to hide dismay
or fear. Strangely, I felt none;
it is accounting time. 
For once, no feeling other than
a dispassionate summing up.

Outside the feeders have gone night-quiet.
The usual flocks are somewhere
doing the same slow rebuilding
as I am before the light dares us all
to come back into daytime
where every weakness shall be exposed.
Until then? The couch, the thinking,
the steeling of my own wings
for tomorrow’s flight.

how swiftly
untouched
becomes
apparently untouchable
and unloved becomes
utterly unlovable
in our heads and
cores

how easily
another’s invalidation shatters
our own experience of
our own validity

how often
them breaking a window
to escape from us
as if we were on fire
translates into us thinking
what we see in the broken glass —
shards, blood, scraps caught
on the points — is an accurate
mirror for who we are

we must close our eyes
to all that
and chant ourselves back

repeat:
I am not
their wreckage
neither toxic
nor shattered
neither invalid
nor in flames

open your eyes

what did you understand beforehand about
the end of your self. what were you told it would be
like. did you prepare accordingly. did you feel
ready when it came and now that it has come
do you know that your eyes have closed
or are you seeing things more sharply now
that all the trappings of your self
are out of the way. maybe this is how
one becomes immortal. no one else ever knows
you are not gone. you see them mourning
and bang on the Glass between you saying

stop, no. i’m not gone. i can see all better
than before. that’s all that’s changed. i see
you and forgive you, love you, wish i had,
wish i had not. it isn’t jesus land here, nor is it
valhalla or even something better or worse.
it’s just here. it’s being here near all of
the everlasting here and always now
and not being able to be a part of it
or even to be seen. we throng here, all of us
longing to be seen and heard
and you don’t can’t won’t
see us. we never left. i’ve gone nowhere.
you can’t see me and cannot realize
how complete the world remains.
how little has changed.

whatever could you have understood
about any of this
if you had been told the truth.
no wonder someone had to invent heaven
and its neighborhood.

In New England we stare up at gray,
see no individual clouds, call it
a snow sky. We say, looks like snow.

The forecasts call out exact times
for when it is supposed to start
and we stare out the window and say,

I think it’s coming early, let’s see
if they’ve got it this time. When we
catch sight of the first flakes, we judge

the weather reports and say, nailed it
or looks like they were wrong. The snow
itself could care less about commentary

as it falls. In the end, neither do we. We sit
on our couches and say, too early to go out
and clear the walk, or better get out there

before it gets too deep, or screw it, I’m going
nowhere it’s too damn cold. We stare at the
television as the snow comes down

regardless of our gaze. Welcome to New England,
we say. Don’t like the weather, wait a minute.
We laugh a bit, stare at screens and the sky, powerless

and resigned and judgmental to the end. Don’t like
the weather, why are you here? If you are one of us,
you will sit with us. If not, Florida awaits.

Hoping for a small slow start
to the process, he turned up in any place
he thought he might find it. Slow and small
in bars, small and slow in all night restaurants;
listening to small talk for clues, watching
others taking their time with whoever
was across the table from them.

One of these days, soon, he told himself every night.
He would be ready soon enough. He’d make contact
with another. Watching people in public spaces
from his seat alone with a cup of coffee
or a glass of whisky and his imagination
and no one ever really saw him, none of them
even knew his name — not even the servers
to whom he never said a thing except to give his order
and murmur a pleasant thank you in return when it came.