I wipe off the crust the rain has left behind
on my little window on the world of mud and dreams.
I am at odds with my past, present, future.
I practice. I sit. I play.
I do not work.
There is no work.
They tell me that play is
the aesthetic sublimation
of labor’s constraints.
So how do I play?
I smoke. I drink.
I refuse to dream.
Life is a closed door.
Our apartment smells of trash, stale rooms
and the murky water that runs one hour each noon.
Diesel smog is another excuse for dawn.
The baby I never have will not cry for me.
I hoist myself onto the ledge overhanging your apartment.
You know I cannot live.
Don’t cry. I’ve already told you, papa.
Tomorrow is not for me.
Don’t ask me to live to crumpled over with worry.
My barricades will never hold.
My armor is an illusion.
Don’t cry. I can’t protect myself, papa. I never could.
And so you understand why –
Why I play, play, play –
weaving codes into my metaphors,
symbols into my desperation.
In a woman, self-destruction is beautiful –
don’t you understand, mama?
Don’t cry, mama. The beauty is in the forgetting.
I will be what you always wanted me to be.
Vibrant, immortal, a memory --
a photograph young, perpetually renewing;
not the reality
a mirror on a headstone
my young brothers gazing into dawn
our eyes frozen blue and white;
paralyzed by an infinite sky.
February 16, 2002