It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down.
—Emily Dickinson
Late
last night
[on way back
from hotel]
I walked
into the mouth
of a long empty alley
full of dark liminalities—
doorways, a row
of giant garage doors
(dragon’s teeth)
& a single cinematic
loading dock
laid out
in a long shadow of lawn
—Okay, I was a a little drunk
& stiff from a day
crammed with pushing thru
an ever-shifting threshold
of pain—
[walking between cars
on a barreling train]
—& so was belligerent
about my life
I can walk
thru the valley of death
if I want to
& I will, thank you
(don’t worry
nothing
came of it, no shadows
assembling themselves,
chaos’ intimates,
into puppet visage—wolf thief
spot-lit by the moon,
murderous goon
popping up,
switchblade)
Why chance it?
I think I needed that
brand of risk—now
—here,
inside the endless present:
expectancy a kind of held-breath bravado,
a ready-for-anything-
bring it on, baby,
kind of interiority
—“infinitude confined”
within the body’s
fuse box,
its bank of sparks
& shadows;
Needed that runway
of primordial fear,
diurnal strut, its allegorical
blind alley,
SOMETHING to parade
my badass broken self along,
stomping with brittle feet
thru shards of what ifs &
you’re in the wrong place,
brother, at the right time
blues
Was I asking for trouble?
You tell me.
Maybe a wish
to be wiped clean again
—rebooted
but not undone.
I don’t know.
Just that
into that gap
I had to go
tightrope walking
[all the stations]
of danger’s church,
taking risk
a kind of prayer.
How, for those few
unparceled moments
I was…
let’s just say
I disappeared
into a dream rut
full of bitter disasters
[came out safe
& clean
like a washed car]
& a little less drunk
tho turned around
so that the hotel could
be any which way
—“there is something
that worries us about solitude”—
& the umapped grid
a vast maze in which
to lose oneself
the elevated train
rattling above
& the cement under my feet
singing
[chorus after chorus]
my unlucky
& inevitable
demise.
for Ross
