Strike
Anywhere
If
only something horrible would happen; the revelation
of a
child, hit for the first time, an overturned corpse
on the
lawn, if only something ugly would happen
to my
lover, or to me, something that would follow me
like a
kid lost in the woods while I was hiking,
follow
me until I died,
something
that would forever turn my head fifteen degrees
to the
right, and drop my gaze as if it weighed
so
much that it was stuck to the rug. If only murder,
or
indifference, or both. If only something fake horrible
would
happen, Jennifer Love-Hewitt would be
convincingly
bloody and bruised, but she'd be
standing
next to her costar, sharing a laugh.
Someone,
throw both shoes at President Bush.
A
bloodbath. A grenade. An apocalypse
involving
a very close family and unlikely travel.
If
only the world would break. If Medea
would
just pin her children's corpses to the helm of her chariot
and
ride off into the sun.
If
only a pack of men would pin my gaze to the floor
and
slightly to the right, mix me up so bad
that I
stutter when I try say their names, so that
I
could kill one in self-defense with an ice skate
that I
found, by chance, on the floor without looking;
if
only I could hide their descriptions in coffee cans,
which
I would fill with nails and strike-anywhere
matcheads,
and I would have a public place to drop it on,
unequivocally
the victim, now the perpetrator,
the
lines so clear, please, God, I think they misunderstood
when
you said let there be light, you meant lines,
let
there be lines as unequivocal as the ones drawn
between
the elbow and the palm of a veteran in a bathtub,
let
there be good, and bad, and torture, and distinctions,
no
conflict, no innovation, no relief, no stories to tell,
just
lines and events, a chart of everything
that
has ever happened, geometrical, abhorrently practical.
Let
all the pain of the earth rise up into my graph paper
until
it is simply math, elegant, concrete.
Let
there be lines.
Wow. You dropped me into the middle of an ocean with this one...and I'm finding the process of drowning delightful, lol. There is so much chaos in this piece, at the beginning, that the ending, "let there be lines" and the lines building up to it, come very contrasted. It works though. I like this piece. I know I'm not getting everything, or much of anything...but I like how this poem leaves me with questions, because I've had to read it a couple times, and am enjoying it more with each read.
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