From One Big Self

C. D. Wright

My Dear Conflicted Reader,

   If you will grant me that most of us have an equivocal nature, and that when we waken we have not made up our minds which direction we’re headed; so that—you might see a man driving to work in a perfume and dye-free shirt, and a woman with an overdone tan hold up an orange flag in one hand, a Virginia Slim in the other—as if this were their providence. Grant me that both of them were likely contemplating a different scheme of things. WHERE DO YOU WANT TO SPEND ETERNITY the church marquee demands on the way to my boy’s school, SMOKING OR NON-SMOKING. I admit I had not thought of where or which direction in exactly those terms. The radio ministry says g-o-d has a wrong answer button and we are all waiting for it to go off. …

*

Dear Virtual Lifer,

This is strictly a what-if proposition:

What if I were to trade my manumission for your incarceration. If only for a day. At the end of which the shoes must be left at the main gate to be filled by their original occupants. There is no point and we will not shrink from it. There is only this day to re-invent everything and lose it all over again. Nothing will be settled or made easy.

If you were me:

If you wanted blueberries you could have a big bowl. Two dozen bushes right on your hill. And thornless raspberries at the bottom. Walk barefooted; there’s no glass. If you want to kiss your kid you can. If you want a Porsche, buy it on the installment plan. You have so many good books you can’t begin to count them. Walk the dog to the bay every living day. The air is salted. Every June you can hear the blues jumping before seeing water through the vault in the leaves. Watch the wren nesting in the sculpture by the shed. Smoke if you feel like it. Or swim. Call a friend. Or keep perfectly still. The morning’s free.

If I were you:

Fuck up today, and it’s solitary, Sister Woman, the padded dress with the food log to gnaw upon. This is where you enter the eye of the fart. The air is foul. The dirt is gumbo. Avoid all physical contact. Come nightfall the bugs will carry you off. You don’t have a clue, do you.

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My Dear Affluent Reader

   Welcome to the Pecanland Mall. Sadly, the pecan grove had to be dozed to build it. Home Depot razed another grove. There is just the one grove left and the creeper and the ivy have blunted its sun. The uglification of your landscape is all but concluded. We are driving around the shorn suburb of your intelligence, the photographer and her factotum. Later we’ll walk in the shadows of South Grand. They say, in the heyday of natural gas, there were houses with hinges of gold. They say so. We are gaining on the cancerous alley of our death. Which, when all is said or unsaid, done or left undone, shriven or unforgiven, this business of dying, is our most commonly held goal.

Ready or not. 0 exceptions.

Don’t ask.

*

Dear Prisoner,

I too love.        Faces.  Hands.            The circumference

Of the oaks.    I confess.         To nothing

You could use.            In a court of law.        I found.

That sickly sweet ambrosia of hope.   Unmendable

Seine of sadness.                     Experience taken away.

From you.        I would open.              The mystery

Of your birth. To you.            I know.            We can

Change. Knowing. Full well. Knowing.

It is not enough.

poetry        time    space death

I thought.        I could write.  An exculpatory note

I cannot. Yes, it is bitter.        Every bit of it, bitter.

The course taken by blood.     All thinking

Deceives us.    Lead (kindly) light.

Notwithstanding this grave.   Your garden.

This cell.                      Your dwelling.            Be unaccountably free.

*

Dear Dying Town

   The food is cheap; the squirrels are black; the box factories have all moved off-shore; the light reproaches us, and our coffee is watered down, but we have an offer from the Feds to make nerve gas; the tribe is lobbying hard for another casino; the bids are out to attract a nuclear dump; and there’s talk of a supermax—

In the descending order of your feelings

Please identify your concerns

Postscript: Remember Susanville, where Restore the Night Sky has become the town cry.

*

Dear Unbidden, Unbred,

   This is a flock of sorrows, of unoriginal sins, a litany of obscenities. This is a festering of hateful questions. Your only mirror is one of stainless steel. The image it affords will not tell whether you are young still or even real. In a claustral space. Hours of lead, air of lead. The sound, metallic and amped. You will know the force of this confinement as none other. You have been sentenced for worthlessness. In other eyes, apotympanismos is barely good enough. The strapdown team is on its way. The stricken, whose doves you harmed, will get a mean measure of peace. The schadenfreudes, the sons of schadenfreudes, will witness your end ‘with howls of execration.’ Followed by the burning of your worthless body on a pile of old tires. None will claim your remains nor your worthless effects: soapdish, vaseline, comb, paperback. All you possess is your soul whose mold you already deformed. You brought this on yourself. You and no one else. You with the dirty blonde hair, backcountry scars and the lazy dog-eye. You shot the law and the law won. You become a reject of hell.

*

Dear Child of God,

   If you will allow me time. To make a dove.       I will spend it well.

A half success is more than can be hoped for. And turning on

The hope machine is dangerous to contemplate. First.           I have to

Find a solid bottom.    Where the scum gets hard and the

Scutwork starts. One requires ideal tools: a huge suitcase

Of love            a set of de-iced wings            the ghost of a flea

Music intermittent or ongoing.           Here one exits the forest

Of men and women. Here one re-dreams the big blown dream

Of socialism.   Deep in the suckhole. Where Lou Vindie kept

Her hammer. Under her pillow.          Like a wedge of wedding cake.

Working from my best memory.         Of a bird I first saw nesting

In the razor wire.