September 11, 2001
I
followed after you plunging over the ledge wanting to bring
you back alive if I could, a quest that proved futile when
I found no flesh & blood in the dark, my hands still groping
thru the void refusing to give up even though I heard the
bells echo death. . .I inhabited that empty space & breathed
it in knowing you had passed so far beyond my reach no action
I could ever take would restore your body to me & I would
never be able to resurrect you thriving in the physical world
we had left behind us, the physical world I did not want to
live in without you, so I pitched my tent in a territory defined
only by the term bleak zero. . .burning with loss, I continued
my search & rescue operation looking for you beneath the
tons of wreckage that had come soon as I heard the fatal news
explosion potent to rock me with its shock waves driving me
over the ledge, a search & rescue operation all common
sense taught me doomed to fail, a search & rescue operation
I needed to mount even though I knew it would never allow
me to recover you. . .
exhausted
by my own futile effort repeated over & over again more
times than I could count, so many times I found it difficult
to remember ever having done anything else, so many times
it seemed as if the span of my life should already have been
filled beginning to end, exhausted I collapsed into
deep sleep praying with my last thought I would at last be graced with oblivion, if not
permanent, at least temporary. . .as I slept, my dream returned me to the past when
you were alive & we were still together, a summer afternoon
we spent at a picnic in the park wandering off alone to stand
by the side of the river watching the sun shed its glory all
across the water creating an incandescent mirror to feed our
eyes & minds flooding us with tenderness we could only
express in a silent embrace, our hearts pumping to the rhythm
of an ecstasy so sweet no words could express the love we
knew. . .this love still existed & burned inside me scorching
my flesh until I woke up ignited by a dream my memory had
painted so well I opened my eyes expecting I would find myself
inside that day once more, but I saw the endless night surrounding
me instead, still expecting I could reach out & touch
you in the dark, a connection more than able to ignite that
ancient summer day so it could rise again, an expectation
that crumbled to dust when my hands could discover nothing
but empty air, a discovery that drove my lingering dream away
& reminded me of the fatal news explosion I had been enticed
to forget, an enticement that left me with fresh wounds to
suffer. . .
I
cried, but my tears could not extinguish the fire of love
that had been resurrected deep inside me, a resurrection that
surged hotter & brighter despite the night that had so
long submerged me, despite the death that had swallowed you,
the death I had no choice other than to face recognizing I
could never defeat your killer & free your body from the
tomb he had sentenced it to inhabit forever. . .left there
standing alone in the void with nothing but my own tears for
company, I thought about death & I thought about love
& gradually, the two thoughts combined to create revelation:
love still thrived even after the apocalypse of flesh &
could redeem the void that had caged me, the void I had become.
. .in the wake of this revelation, light gradually began to
grow born to end the endless night that had enmeshed me gracing
my eyes with the illumination I needed so I could climb up
out of that pit & return to the physical world I had left
behind, a climb I made quite easily because I carried the
sweet weight of love bringing back its redemptive knowledge
with me, the knowledge that the invisible muscle of love would
always prove stronger than death connecting the dance of my
body intimate to the dance of your soul, a connection that
no doubt will survive the moment when death comes to devour
the mortal part of me, a connection that no doubt will lead me to find
you by the side of the river upon that eternal summer day,
a connection we celebrate when we join together in a silent
embrace, two souls merging in a rhythm of ecstasy only the
language of heaven can describe, a language composed of incandescent
words & motions expressing deep love forever & ever
in the presence of angels. . .
Secession
(The Ideal of Love)
I
am watching television in some bar when regular programming
is interrupted for an emergency news flash: the Government
has decided to shut the city down because the place is too
much damned trouble, a decision that will be enforced at once
since the National Guard has already established a circle
around the whole condemned territory with orders to let no
one else in & no one else out
. . . news coverage jumps to the President speaking to the
nation live from the Oval Office announcing that his personal
agents have already infiltrated the city transporting tactical
nuclear weapons that will strategically be placed in a pattern
scientifically determined able to decimate the entire area
transforming it to a radioactive wasteland, its buildings
ruins & all its citizens dead, an annihilation the President
says he is justified to order because it is in perfect accordance
with the mandate he received in the last election, a mandate
that empowers him to eliminate the criminals, the
drug addicts, the homosexuals, the aliens & all the other
undesirable elements who simply do not fit into our common
vision of the pure America that must be. . .the bar I am sitting
in is close to the urban zone that has been cordoned off &
marked for extinction separated from it only by the river
flowing just outside the door, so I initially breathe a sigh
of relief grateful that the circle had been drawn small enough
so I would not be confined inside the target
. . . then, I slap my forgetful head as I realize your address
places you exactly at the center of what will soon be called
ground zero unless you happen to have spent a few days out
of town with someone other than me. . .faced with a dilemma,
I engage in fierce internal debate: should I travel away from
the city back towards home just in case the explosions to
come destroy a larger circle of territory than the President's
technical expects have estimated? should I lock my doors & windows, close my eyes & retreat
into my dreams pretending this apocalypse is not about to
happen? or should I find a way to penetrate the city violating
the knot of security that had already been yanked tight around
that doomed land risking my life to rescue you from the mass
execution the President has planned?. . .this romantic quest
will prove quite silly if I reach your house to find no one
home, a note posted on the door indicating you had gone to
some geographical location a safe distance from the area designated
for oblivion by the President's edict. . .I try to call your
house from the bar's pay phone only to receive the recorded
message that the city has been placed under a state of emergency
& as a result, all communication to its area code has
been suspended forever, news that leaves me temporarily perplexed
unable to decide what my next move should be. . .after a moment
of thought, my heart decides I must break into the city simply
because you may be there & I cannot imagine myself continuing
to live in the world without you. . .besides, I hope I may
find the identity of rebel hero hidden somewhere deep inside
me, an identity that I perhaps may live up to in this crisis
saving the city from its Presidential death sentence. . .
choosing
to be driven by the ideal of love, I leave the bar & go
to the river knowing that more conventional paths to the city
have already been blocked supposing my best chance of reaching
the city will be to swim across it using the cover of night
& keeping myself submerged as much as possible in order
to avoid capture in case the authorities have anticipated
someone trying to violate the cordon by water & sent out
patrol boats to frustrate the attempt. . .I swim all the way,
however, without encountering any opposition apparently discovering
one method of access the Government has not thought to block.
. .I emerge from the river into the city & immediately
run thru the streets taking the most direct route possible
cutting thru the lobbies of buildings to sustain a straight
line, the shortest distance between two points, moving faster
than I moved thirty years ago, when I was still a sprinter,
wanting to reach you as quickly as I can, my legs driven by
the ideal of love, moving faster than the speed of light,
moving fast enough to reverse the flow of time. . .
I
arrive at your house & am ecstatic to find you home getting
there before the news flash & the Presidential announcement
have been made, sitting down on your couch with you, so we
can watch them on the television together, the same news flash
& the same Presidential address I had seen back in the
bar. . .as we watch, you notice the map of the city pasted
on the wall of the Oval Office next to the President's talking
head, a map that clearly displays not only the places where
the tactical nuclear weapons will be set but also the location
of the central detonator since the strategy apparently calls
for all the explosions to happen simultaneously, a strategy
that will make it easier for us to counter the President's
lethal desire. . .
you
& I go out to the street where we find crowds moving in
random directions possessed by a chaotic panic face to face
with death that seems both imminent & inevitable until
we reveal the secret location of the central detonator, a
location that the President unintentionally exposed when he
forgot to take the map down from the Oval Office wall before
the national television broadcast. . .once the secret information
we have brought has passed by word of mouth thru the entire
crowd, the crowd becomes united & organized in pursuit
of one aim: to reach the central detonator & destroy its
capacity to deliver the ignition signal to the nuclear bombs
that have been planted around the city. . .we know that we
do not have much time, so I teach everyone the tricks of speed
I had used to reach your house quickly & we all immediately
run thru the streets taking the most direct route possible
cutting thru the lobbies of buildings to sustain the straightest
line possible, the shortest distance between two points, wanting
to reach the detonator as quickly as we can, our legs moving faster than the speed of light,
fast enough to reverse the flow of time. . .
we
arrive at the location we need to reach just as the agents
of the President arrive, even before they have unloaded the
generator from its truck, so we know that if we fight hard
enough, we can stop them from installing & programming
it able to deliver the detonation signal to the nuclear bombs.
. .the Presidential agents have brought a regiment of soldiers
with them to protect them as they do the job the President
has ordered them to do & this regiment forms a protective
circle around the Presidential agents & their detonator,
a circle of heavily-armed soldiers bristling with guns. .
.we nevertheless surge against this circle knowing we must
break thru it, or else
our lives will certainly end at ground zero of the nuclear
apocalypse these officially-sanctioned terrorists intend to
ignite. . .many of us are wounded or shot down dead in the
street, a river of blood flowing beneath our feet, but we
have no choice other than to mourn our losses later continuing
to surge against the blockade opposing us battling against
it with nothing but our naked hands determined to break thru
it, no matter what the victory might cost.
. .
at
last, we overwhelm the regiment of soldiers breaking thru
the circle with the force of our superior numbers, a break
that allows us to reach the Presidential agents, seize the
detonator from them & smash the detonator against the
concrete street. . .our triumph in this war achieved, we bandage
the wounded & solemnly bury the dead before we announce
our decision to secede from the nation forming our own free
republic, an announcement that causes the city to erupt in
wild celebration. . .you & I exchange a thousand kisses
expressing an intimacy deeper than flesh knowing that devotion
to the ideal of love has allowed us to win, at least today,
hoping that the President will accept our secession &
practice a policy of peaceful coexistence with us, fearing
that he will instead send more troops to attack us & try
to force us back into a union intent upon our destruction.
. .
Play
of Flesh
I
want to spend the day with you inhabiting the light that has
come after days of rain. . . perhaps we will wake up at the
same moment in my bed or in your bed together & we will
leap up ecstatic knowing that the time to celebrate our eternal
marriage is at hand going to take a joint shower, me scrubbing
you as you scrub me before we get dressed & walk down
the block to an open diner where we will order a pancake breakfast,
pancakes that no doubt will be spangled with jubilee when
they arrive at our table. . .once we have finished eating,
since we have decided to set aside all work for the day so
we can devote our whole minds to this festival of love, we
will continue walking until we reach the park where we will
lounge beneath the shade of trees near the river watching
radiance dance across the water, trees that will grace us
with a private bower so we can drop our pants & touch
each other as we choose scattering our semen to mingle in
the grass beneath us. . . time seems to vanish as the separation
of our flesh at last knows its healing rocking to the rhythm
of the ecstasy we have ignited together forgetting all about
lunch since I am satisfied by your meat as you are satisfied
by mine. . .we only realize how long we have been in the park
when we happen to look up & notice the descendant sun
flashing red upon the river, a signal that night will soon
come, yet we linger wanting to breathe in the light &
shadow so long as they last, wanting to walk back to my house
or to your house beneath the stars & the moon stopping
on the way for cheeseburgers & chocolate cream pies so
that we will not need to waste any time later cooking food
& washing dishes, time that will be spent better celebrating
the eternal marriage that had been consecrated back in the
park. . .you want to spend the night with me & I, of course,
say yes, so we walk up the steps together & leap ecstatic
back into bed never pausing to read the mail or to watch any
television knowing that our intimate play of flesh will ignite
the house luminous, an illumination that will break the night
wide open & grace heaven with a revelation of our deep
beauty. . .