Oceans of Space
They say you shouldn't ever begin a story with a suicide:
Where would you go then?
A story loses interest when the major players have all died.
If inevitable, it belongs at the end,
Like Hamlet, his reckless lunge into a doomed tip;
When Fortinbras arrives, everyone gives the stage the slip
And so I’ll start with a suicide averted.
In the ocean of space
Between all my raging pretensions
And the banal ink I’ve etched onto the page
Are two tiny islands pinned to a map
I’ve unfurled across my wall
And beyond the blue vastness is the edge of a continent,
A massive expanse of the solidity I’ve wished to be:
I’ll never get there;
Get me to my rapier
Stranded in the middle of the sea
Drifting west or perhaps east
(You never learned to read the sun)
Clinging to waterlogged flotsam
Fighting not to sink to the bottom.
But you get tired of kicking toward
A false varnish of seeming.
Nor is it palatable to accept returning
To the bland island of actual being
And so you drift in the current
Until your arms tire, go numb;
Just let go---- it’s no longer any fun
9/24/17
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