EACH OF US A MYSTERY WE CANNOT READ ALONE
Assassins, I know you’re out there, but what makes you so insistent on
bumping me off? Why waste time tracking my whereabouts, just one more
chump poet looking for a fix of rhyme and measure? I’ve read the sage
Dalai Lama’s weigh-in on this matter, and it appears, surprisingly
enough, your efforts will prove unsatisfyingly, eternally
futile, even dimwitted upon further inspection. Try your hand at a sonnet,
ghazal, or pantoum, I implore. Occasionally there’s applause. Or what about
haiku? You’ve got sabi written all over you. My suggestion: let us
investigate your motives by counting first the syllables you think
justify sliding a bullet in a gun. And look around: we share a magnanimous
kingdom with ample room for each of us to do our own wild thing. I’ll follow
leaves end-over-ending this sidewalk, and might I suggest a revision to your
mission statement? Maybe add Mozart; long looks out train windows;
needlework. No more looking through scopes, sharpening knives, obsessing
over my half-rhymes and iambic substitutions. I think your own
pensees could do wonders for our relationship. We’d be like Ishmael and tattooed
Queequeg, wandering around in an Ahab world, each of us a mystery we cannot
read alone. Just picture us sitting down to coffee and swapped stories,
soliciting the other’s world view. Regarding mine, ever notice how many
times the word self is used as a prefix? Not quite as often as
un-, which, by the way, means release from! I’ve always thought trust the most
vital gift we can offer another, so I guess I’m saying I trust you’ll do
what’s best in this narrative we’ve come to share, even if that means
X-ing me out. After all, I’ve spent my life arguing for thoughtful, precise revision.
You, perhaps better than anyone, know what I mean. And since we’re marching to
Zion, the beautiful city of Zion, let’s let our joys be known; and you, oh you, are mine.