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KEVIN HAYES

 

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. . .