Sister Death (running a wee bit late this weekend!)

More on Margo K... think I have a new research project. Because apparently poetry without research is just too spontaneous for this amateur.

Sister Death

I wonder about your face, mostly

why I cannot find a single image.

Is it that history tries to forget

the grave enablers?

Euthanasia’s next of kin?

I looked for your face to see for myself

how you could bear the death and

disposal in your brother’s wake.

How did you process your patients’

pain and hopelessness—

(Like a mother? A soldier?

A dog kicked to follow with dark empty eyes?)

typing and taping away

and not die some yourself?

You reached out to the dying dead

the frantic toddlers tumbling in the dark

falling without handrails or walls;

crashing through a house of leaves

never hitting the floor.

You reached out and plucked them from the fall,

tucked them into white sheets.

(Could it have been gentle?)

You did not talk them off the ledge

when you kissed them good night,

but (at least, perhaps) they went quietly.

As I try to picture your face,

your experienced eyes

I must ask and accept no answer:

Did you thread the needle lightly,

with tenderness? Or like an awkward nurse,

did you have to search for a vein,

fishing through fat and muscle

apologizing, this will only sting

but a moment.

Margo Kevorkian

Choppy. I know. Editing will hopefully take place for this and previous posts in the near future.

Margo,

the steady handed soldier,

the stagehand cloaked in black.

You recorded the interviews

the tales of pain and suffering,

the patients searching for peace.

You were there for the first fifteen

departures, procedures, final sessions--

pick your euphemism, Margo,

it's all the same in the end.

In the end all conditions are terminal.

Your brother, Jack, only agreed when

his patient told him: "There is not

any joy, not any joy in life."

Everything is conditional.

Your brother agreed,

"I know that, I know that."

No joy, not any joy,

but what of your silence, Margo?

Thanatron is Death Machine in Greek.

I found an image of your stone, Margo.

Head stone rubbings have given way

to amateur photographers, internet

historians and genealogists.

I found you buried

in gravestone search engines

death cult databases.

Is it wrong to smile,

discovering you here?

You know better than anyone

what the end looks like--the mess

left behind, the survivors taken

under your wing moments after you

and Jack sent their loved ones to rest.

You helped form support groups in

every town touched by the Doctor

and his Thanatron. You brought them

together after he tore them apart.

He was Dr. Death, but Margo, be true,

you were no Bedside Angel either.

CO2

Carbon Dioxide

just after its fire

has been snuffed

a small twist of smoke

winds upward from

the head of a match.

oxygen becomes CO₂.

exhale.

do not cling to

bad air

do not allow it to linger

mouldering

in the chest.

exhale

and release the

600 muscles that

rack the body.

sink toes,

heels into earth

and realize 600

will never be enough

and no one dies

with air in their chest,

not even bad air.

though you can move

smoke with your hand,

you cannot

capture it.

Hopefully the first and last late post

Sorry, I was watching the final episode of the Wire last night and managed to ignore my other obligations.

This isn't a poem, it's a rant. I'll do something with it next week, but it in the end it is unlikely it will look anything like this:

The Count

These days I count sand, hunched like a 'possum, one grain at a time. My tweezers neatly hoover, transporting each spec to the next pile. This position is a significant upgrade to my previous job counting salt. Salt counting is a far more labor intensive task--as much care must be put into maintaining the proper levels of aridity as is put into the actual counting, lest the salt granules moisten and stick together in clumps. The clumps have to be broken apart and spread to dry, then raked back and forth to re-create the proper size of particles before being shoveled back into the pile and counted again, one grain at a time.

Counting sand may seem less glamorous than counting salt, (sand doesn't have half the tricks or powers of salt--salt preserves food, sanitizes wounds, and can crystalize. Salt can also alter the boiling and freezing temperature of water. Sand, on the other hand, may reflect the sun or slowly wear away rock, but its effects do little for humanity beyond landscaping plastic beaches) but counting sand features significantly increased job security. Rock will always be crushed and worn by the wind into smaller and smaller sediments. The inventory of sand in the world will only increase with time--it is unlikely that sand will ever be "used up." Salt may be eaten or soak into the ground. Salt can be lost, and so I am content to enter work each morning, tweezers in hand, grip prepared to gingerly transport one bit of sand at a time. Ready to count.

The Easy Way Out

Short and rough. Really rough. But hey, at least it's short:

This Bar is Now Non-Smoking

It’s not quite my hundredth day

without a cigarette and

I still miss the companionship:

friends huddled together

around bar doorways until

the glowing embers danced too

close to the lips. Fingers stained

burnt umber, dry and cracked,

smash the butt into the wall.

Conversations that are

important never happen

inside bars. But at the fringe,

you can still feel the heat from

inside, still hear the bouncers

laughing and sometimes the

hard crack of a pool cue as

it strikes. At the fringe stand

the philosophers. The nihilists.

No denying nothing.

Round One

I wrote this after spending a little time with Rilke's Duino Elegies. I'm still not sure if I like it. Either way, I think it needs to be cut with the editing knife in the near future. I also definitely plan on reworking the line breaks to follow a somewhat more orderly meter-- nothing too formal, just a business casual approach to following a strict meter. No tie (ahem, iambic pentameter) required, just a pair of khakis to keep things semi-professional. At any rate, my apologies for any formatting or grammatical errors. Here you go:

On Rilke’s Duino Elegies

I.

“Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure”

Is it as Rilke supposed—

no place we can remain?

A roar as the ethereal bodies

float through mansions and mausoleums

ghettos and oil spills, caverns

closets and forests,

whispers swept by the wind

as smoke sucked through a straw

through fissures of time,

cracks of memory, consciousness

and the incomprehensible space

between each atom of every cell.

The worlds spun like fibers of a rope

and so tightly spun, are sent

spinning among the terrifying angels

in the whirlwind between

the living and the dead.

II.

“In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us”

We must somehow forget all who we leave behind,

though some may find it difficult to forget us.

Lovers will caress the empty side of the bed

or embrace a well worn pillow, even long after the smell

of the departed has faded away. Our sisters,

and friends will pour through photographs

cut, paste, collage, cry to create lost memories.

Mothers will touch stretch marks, or perhaps

a long, deep scar, hip to hip, as was once the practice,

while fathers choose trinkets—a feather

or a stone found camping forever to be kept

on a desk or nightstand so as to maintain

some connection with the dead.

The cats alone will not be sentimental

in their mourning. They will cry out as they can,

yowling and searching the empty corners of the

unsure of how to devote their lives.

III.

“Of course, it is strange to inhabit the Earth no longer.”

Sooner or later they will all forget,

as I must forget once I reach the whirlwind.

I will forget my customs, so recently learned:

my morning coffee, favorite shirt, nicotine cravings

never quite filled by a fondness for lemon drops.

I will forget the price of gas and I will forget how to drive a car.

I will forget my career and the years juggling work and school.

I will forget the five years waiting tables and every

promise broken to never do it again.

I will forget the name of the first man I slept with;

the bitter pith of grapefruit; pomegranate seeds,

cilantro, curry, salt, and the slight discomfort of steak

caught between ones teeth.

I will no longer know how to button my jacket

no longer feel heat and cold and the dry whip of wind

in my face each January as I walk hunched, eyes squint

towards the sidewalk. I will forget

the winter comfort of whiskey,

and that tequila burned worse that kerosene.

I will forget family gatherings with round, pregnant aunts,

roast and meatballs and the fried chicken my uncle

insisted on each year. I will forget Grandma’s wig

and when my cousin tried to run off with Dad’s beer.

I will forget my first dog and the Christmas Eve when there was

nothing left to do but stand and cry and wait

in the cold clinic as he went still beneath my hand.

I will forget how to lace my shoes or powder my face.

I will forget my birthday and the street I grew up on

as I will forget the taste of my lovers tongue late at night

and early in the morning.

I will hang on as long as I can, but it must all slide away.

I will lose the smell of smoke, garlic, peppers,

and freshly cut grass.

There is a quiet smell on the back of my lover’s neck,

and that too I must lose

as I forget sex and lips;

sunlight and

all the colors the sky can become.

I once learned abhay means fearless.

I will forget that as well,

but I will no longer fear the ocean

or the waves that tear the world apart.

I will forget how to speak.

touch

and

forgetting will

thought

fully immersed

whirlwind now.

a spider web captured by winds

(web torn, it clings to the branch

for a moment before it is swept away).

Here, spinning.

Here all forgot,

but perhaps,

Rilke’s terrifying angels.

Terms of Agreement

1. 11:59 pm, Sunday, every Sunday, I will (attempt) to provide one page of fiction or one poem (or poem in progress) worthy of peer review.

2. I will (attempt) to remember this engagement.

3. and this url.