Nonlinear

As brave as a deciduous tree in winter,

with only its trembling to give, I live.

Leaves, ordinary, thin, brown, die;

dying, enrich the earth; I?

For the cruciform tree, a resurrection,

seasons, promise, a rebirth. There are no coincidences,

there is a plan, the hope of seedlings, again, again, again.

Not for me. For me, the responsibilities

of chaos. For me, the uncertainties of matter,

the randomness, the ecodisasters,

the blasted, dying trees, the impartialities

of space,

of place.

(They now find patterns

in nonlinear matter,

clinging to fractals,

still hoping to escape

random, null space

and soon

eroding

place.)

Even Heisenberg was certain

that matter would not die, but become,

if need be, E: the Einsteinian assurance.

But dying is no big deal: Only cockroaches live forever.

And matter, as we know it, must disappear.

The ultimate change,

called end, is embossed upon your genes.

And determined to live at all cost,

what freedom, what real,

if evanescent, truth

is lost?

HE CALLED ME "FAT"

He called me “fat,” and I cringed, not

at the insult, as such (not much a one)

but at the verbal dull, the paucity of

adjective, the pervading mental lull, the

flap of his limp and flaccid gums, the lack of

hearty fun. Fat? Why fat, I cried? Surely,

round would move things up a pitch or two,

and gargantuan would do, and corpulent

construe the adipose goo at hand. Why fat, oh,

fatuous man? Call me beefy, blimp, or bulging;

term me bovine, bull, or burly; name me chunky,

roly-poly ,or inflated as your nog. O, linguini,

limp and little! Your linguistic torpor bores, ignores

the 25,000 words that Joyce and Shakespeare

forged, and do not hoard (but your words,

overall, are snores). As I eat my s’mores,

let's resume: I am thickset, paunchy, heavy

as the synapses in you; I am wider than a

canyon and the broad primordial stew. Fat?

Fat, you fraud? I am Queen of unburnt calorie,

the rarest elephantine; the Mobyest of

sentient beasts, the diet doctor’s bawd.

My stockiness drives diet stock, my pudge

the script of pills; I am larger than Niagara

and the Roman seven hills. Dormant doormat,

there are spas of verdant bliss for me, but no

school for fools like you. You are but a speck of

rotten lard, a granule of mere sand; I am high and

vast and infinite, dimensionally great and grand.

TO THE THANATOS WITHIN ME

I embrace you, dear shadow,

my revelatory friend,

dear suicidal impulse; today

I dream of the parapets above

A la Vielle Russie, and

of splattering near the Plaza

where Woody Allen wooed young girls,

leaving a bit of me

on the Strand Bookstand,

near the park and the seals —

but this is too vibrant and real.

Better to find myself alone

in a porcelain tub

with chamomile bath oil

(as if I needed to be calm;

here is eternity for that),

listening to Verdi’s Requiem,

holding a razor,

or better still, to poison myself

with small scored rose pills,

avoiding arsenic and the Bovary traps

of indigestion, detection;

best with caplets, red carafes of wine,

or Guinness brew —

(who wouldn’t want to quaff a few?)

What catharsis there is

in the dive, the gesture, the infinite jest,

the slash, the brush (its own fire),

the dance with death?

Ah, this: as I flirt, you draw near,

chingon to my chingada

bite my ear, stop my breath—

who else could do that?

Dear friend of ferment,

who unearths the worms

that enrich this blissful human soil,

promising the end of eternal roil:

Te quiero, my Mescal, my absinthe,

my blue cyanosing corps, my Mayakovsky, my you. . .

Was this a mistake? Is it too late . . . ?

You bite my ear, take up my rear, whisper:

Yes.