Whenever I remember the big news we all lived through,

it’s funny, because, was I always out-of-it, distracted?

 

Was I even there?  Take, for example, the Challenger

Disaster.  An assistant to a lesbian antiques restorer,

 

stoned, dribbling stripper across provincial furniture,

I watched it with her on a portable, black Panasonic:

 

that star-like burst, one long smoke strand arching

to the right, a white panache adorning empty sky.

 

After Diana Spencer died, I went out, like everybody,

to buy that embarrassing Elton John CD, “Goodbye,

 

England’s Rose,” a moving remake of his own oldie,

“Candle in the Wind.”  I too attended to her bloody

 

Westminster Abbey funeral, arrested in the vanilla-scented

development of some dumb trick, walls pale, dull, no art

 

anywhere, no books.  He had served in Desert Storm.

Did he see what I saw, Tuesday, September eleven,

 

one on one, twin crumbling towers, black clouds?  No, no

one could possibly have heard Schubert's string quintet

 

as beautifully as I had heard it, just two days earlier,

at a concert in a penthouse, evening sun exploding

 

through the plate glass windows.  As the youngish composer

decomposes from syphilis, his skeletal foundation quaking,

 

he scribbles pizzicato love notes to any pair of cellos, slow

steady heartbeats plunked under crying strings, his adagio

 

repeating in the echo chambers of my outer ears, my cancer-

eaten father’s croaking anger (“America is being attacked”)

 

preserved on the cassette I tugged from the answering

machine, soon after he died, and archive, mornings,

 

in my shirt front pocket, right atop my heart, beside

his hot pen.  Wait, wait, readers, lit minors, history

 

majors, staring, past pale pages, glowing screens,

at ghostly faces, I'll strip, whistling in the mirror

 

to this bright paisley bathroom all about us, imitating

bird news everywhere, present, willing, able, ready.

 

 

 

A bright flat light blue public swimming pool a backdrop to his bust, his boom

box blasting some

 

dumb ditty, a tweaking twink, twitching

on a rainbow flag beach towel, twisting

 

a cock ring around his wrist, limp,

stops, does another, better, bump.

 

He prays, "Body, off me, please.

Or, at least, help other people

 

put on this green glow-stick, beaded

with ears, seashells, beating hearts."

 

*

 

Beyond the barbed wire fence, a closed, condemned

bedroom furniture warehouse, crumbling, remains,

 

its architecture rounded, oriental, vaguely,

seventies construction obviously shabby,

 

its name, half-visible on rusted metal, American

something, whitewash, blistered by the harsh

 

South Carolina sun, flaking, peeling away,

exposing sheet rock, random areas, gray

 

shapes resembling letters, characters,

diacritical, cursive, Arabic, Chinese.

 

Is that a bullet hole, a period?  No, no

one shot out the sales office window,

 

 

a station wagon’s quick red reflection

crossing this glass sensor, trembling,

 

warm, carrying silhouettes, tiny

black seeds, via our imaginary,

 

home: a brand new polyester floral comforter, smooth, cool, under his knees,

a heavenly air conditioning wall unit slapping his death mask with icy sighs.