by Peter Taylor
And if you had ceased that day
I would not have seen you
Here and understood
The intimate cynicism of the world.
- Don Coles
I
We all end on a slab somewhere
open pages from Gray's Anatomy
smelling of ether and formaldehyde
the final invasion
coming too late
your body
did not wait
for surgeons and accidents
its pallid strength
spiteful of itself
yet calm
in its resolution
to remain an enigma
a bruised print
Brother, where are you?
II
Time
changed you into ceremonies
kept the others sane
my heart
shrunk to a fist
with the slow agony
of recognition
from
the moment
I entered that room
until the moment
I exit this
my visitations
between earth
which holds you
and thought
in which you exist
III
Midnight faces
explode
the firemen I called
knowing they respond faster
helmets firecoats boots
hunched in that basement room
coroner in evening dress
a piece of confetti on his collar
squeezes in
one more body between
cocktails and a nightcap
instructing the police
to drive my sister and I
over to tell your wife
and children
we buy coffee and doughnuts on the way
IV
I think of dying every day
slow excretion of self
endless form of heart
brain kidneys tiny
explosions
waiting to expose the film
I keep your pictures safe
from the infinite exposure
of the sun
when I advance the roll
you disappear
last frame
carrying your ashes
in a box
surprised
how little is left
V
A cold grimace
all you left to the world
and what to me?
tongue swollen as scream
face a pale mask
orbiting
my night constellation
hand stretches
to touch you
across film across thought
tearing illusive
filaments of memory
language contaminates
as it creates
the flawed universe
we imagine and inhabit
turning the print
over and over
in my mind