In Defense of Nothing. Peter Gizzi

YOUR NOTICES

      This is my poem. The one I was afraid to show you. A poem to provide against the voices that will ultimately ensure my failure in this endeavor. This poem is a pillow, small and embroidered, the satin death pillow used to prop up the face for one last viewing. All attempts of understanding finally and thoroughly erased. This is my poem. The one I tuck under my eyelids when looking inhibits the distinctions of what can be seen. And air always present, always there to stimulate the hair at the base of my neck. Insert this chill exactly where you presume to have found me, only to uncover an abandoned parking lot for eyes. Look harder and you will discover we are all matched to this swatch of steel gray that is as wide as the seam on my scrotum but longer than the chalk ray on the board in the classroom to represent infinity. Silent and irreversible. A fault line running from one hole to another. Forever. That we are drawn, together. So see you on the other side. Even if we can’t represent that which we were hoping to resemble. But for one day heaven. See the tips of buds swaying in union beneath a spring sky so faint so blue that it could only suggest a further devastation, as if we were fated to repeat this day, as if we could. It came and went without the anxiety of anticipation and its finality of passage and unannounced significance stains us good. Even the colors fade so we can only imagine we were once so alive. Sad nothing can be held so thoroughly we might assimilate it. Only in the letting go will the full concentration of tone bleed into the periphery of our lives and settle into a patina that can never be altered. I surrender my vision thus. Because I don’t understand. That joke isn’t funny anymore. It cuts me precisely where laughter is a departure from this parlor. I live on flight 405 departing into an icy altitude—cold and detached. I’m here despite your notices and obituary. That plane didn’t crash. It still hovers around my head. The constant hum of its engines reminds me I still haven’t landed. I know this by the way a hand like a landing strip will reach over to wave here, here, here. So here again is the earth. Not the idea of it, but that clump of dirt and weeds outside my door each day—humiliates me. So long. I’m off to my job, alone in the clouds where my fathers live perhaps younger than I am now. Having left me to dinners, movies, books and with this incredible sickness you call enthusiasm. It’s a smoke screen though. For it was me they stuck out there in that winter hole. Earth so frozen it came up in slags that still get caught in my throat every time you tell me you love me. So don’t. I mate with these voices on the other side. Their memos become the mottos of my solo walk into emblem. As the torn metal of all industrial accidents flowers in my brain. Yeah, I saw the broadcast. Transmission deceived.

      PSALM

      No one lives there

      X and delirium

      —barely wider

      than a sun

      How many greater

      than ourselves

      is air

      Feed the candle

      the gate

      and your house

      DEUS EX MACHINA

      I guess if we get to be here today

      and watch this movie together

      it has all been worth these past thirty-odd years

      it took to get here

      on this Tuesday. In this city.

      Is why I’m here. To know you.

      I will compare knowing and saying

      and tell of all such coordinates

      that run together to the river replete with its ghosts

      in this instance of talk.

      But we won’t scuttle. Will we?

      As it gave the first buoy of its name.

      Friendship, so entire, so perfect

      you will hardly find the like elsewhere.

      Even if the buildings are all in disrepair,

      please, don’t let that inform us.

      It’s meant for us, to pass by that dogwood tree

      in May as our voices carry into Thursday twilight.

      May I keep this promise?

      Along with those petals flaunting the new season.

      Little pennants of time. Boundary stones

      to be collected on the periphery, where I live,

      and where I remain, so I’ll be here thinking of you.

      Don’t worry. I’ll work hard. Places everyone.

      When sunlight accumulates in afternoon.

      A box of elderberry lists behind the alcove …

      then description fails the reader and we

      are left with only shapes and patterns. Still

      a single leaf trembles on the breeze.

      Emblematic, a lovely badge, serrated

      and at peace with the day that has flowered

      beyond the notion of our need.

      Where the reader lists. The poet builds a room,

      it can be small or grand depending on the tone

      as in June her garden is real.

      An intricate lace of affection to correspond

      when wanting fails. Perhaps a yellowed doily

      on your grandmother’s nightstand

      like a tune, long off, played

      on a toy piano. Clink. These lapses

      from time to time fill hours and cars

      on the highway. A room to include your ramble,

      as well as itinerant interlopers visiting

      from unforeseen lake districts—with its news

      of festival lights and famous contests—

      where the song dies down into rotting hulks,

      trunks exposed at the sleeve of the shore.

      These transitions or seams if you like

      inform me. Water and land disguised as matter.

      A carcass dressed and open for inspection

      revealing nothing but process, lovely and

      inescapable from our own play.

      I was waiting behind the skene, worn,

      ravaged from too many trips to the provinces,

      too many performances, too many nights

      accosted by the rabble. Some people got a lot a gun.

      What makes you different? Show me.

      Here’s a dime. Call your dead

      and find out what they’ve learned;

      having been too preoccupied with the house

      and its metaphors and where

      the objects would lead them. Too selfish

      to watch out for us. Abandoned,

      beautiful and wide-eyed, developing the tools

      to maintain the glorious liberties we carry

      in our hearts and pockets. Then something

      else did come to stand in its place: namely you.

      Which is where I’m going tonight,

      despite the distance from seam to shadow.

      For I am relative to your I, while

      this