My friend’s book creates a mythology of himself
and the persona. It’s a shit ton of poems and they are
all good, another friend says. I am humbled, we say.
Here on the cusps of the next set of poems, we flounder—
stuck in the gut by our ideas of what we should be.
We question each other’s fearlessness or lack of knowing
exactly what must be written. One day a friend says, you’re not
doing it anymore. You’re doing everything else to avoid it.
He may have been right, but if so then how could I know?
We can always dance, I say. It’s not the season for it,
he says to me in fatal seriousness. I have thought since then
about my relation to these words. I need an ear to write to.
Jack is dead. Amanda’s living. Victor’s dead. Stacey’s living.
Groucho’s dead. Paul is living. I am standing on the steps
of the official hall of records. I have just declared myself
a poet. I have pulled my gut off the hook and hung it there
for later. I know how to move the language but I forget how
to do it honest. Don’t try to write poems, I say to myself.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Honestly . . .
Why is it so painful to talk to a five-year-old about death?
When she asks what she is going to do without her mom and dad when we die, I can only say I don't know.
When she asks what she will do if she needs me when I'm gone, I can only tell her they'll be other people.
When she asks if kids can die, I have to say yes, but not very often.
When she asks if it hurts to die, I say it depends.
And when she says once her mommy and daddy are dead she will never see them again, I say I don't know if that's true or not (though I think it is), but I hope not.
She has been sad and reflective about the idea of dying, since she noticed what's really happening in Scooby Doo and Belle and Sebastian. It would be much easier to make up a story of afterlives and marble and clouds, but I don't believe those stories. So should I convince her it's true to make her and myself feel better?
She doesn't know enough about life yet to romanticize death or to embrace it as the ultimate human ideal. And yet she is starting to realize that knowing we will die (whatever that looks like) makes food taste better and families worthwhile. The ideal makes songs and movies and art important. Man I wish I believed, like so many others, in something besides poetry. Something to make us feel better. Something to end the questions. I wish I could say, "for sure."
When she asks what she is going to do without her mom and dad when we die, I can only say I don't know.
When she asks what she will do if she needs me when I'm gone, I can only tell her they'll be other people.
When she asks if kids can die, I have to say yes, but not very often.
When she asks if it hurts to die, I say it depends.
And when she says once her mommy and daddy are dead she will never see them again, I say I don't know if that's true or not (though I think it is), but I hope not.
She has been sad and reflective about the idea of dying, since she noticed what's really happening in Scooby Doo and Belle and Sebastian. It would be much easier to make up a story of afterlives and marble and clouds, but I don't believe those stories. So should I convince her it's true to make her and myself feel better?
She doesn't know enough about life yet to romanticize death or to embrace it as the ultimate human ideal. And yet she is starting to realize that knowing we will die (whatever that looks like) makes food taste better and families worthwhile. The ideal makes songs and movies and art important. Man I wish I believed, like so many others, in something besides poetry. Something to make us feel better. Something to end the questions. I wish I could say, "for sure."
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