"The Attributes of Graying"
Act One, Us
You and I were kidnapped from our mothers' wombs,
snatched from our beds in broad daylight and thrown
into miniature prison cells. Oh yes, we screamed in protest,
we screamed and fought against the tyranny of despots
whose laws demanded our freedom from the mothers
who provided both food and shelter through the winter months.
They grabbed us by our skulls and gave us the freedom we
never wanted only to throw us into another prison system.
They fed us, yes, but it was always milk and green beans,
green beans and milk.
Act Two, Me
A figure in a white coat wore a death mask over his mouth.
Like any decent soldier, he protected himself from biological
warfare. He provoked the enemy; he provoked me, his little
prisoner of war. I vowed to destroy him with the screams
of napalm excretion and atomic exhalation.
Act Three, You
Someone posted the picture of a dead flower
on the door. It was a black flower on a white
background, like charcoal dust and cigarette
ash smeared into a virgin's wedding veil or the
white sand of a Florida beach tinted with oil.
The picture shattered my spine into twigs and
broken glass. It paralyzed me from neck-tie
to shoe-lace, and I felt nothing but static
electricity pass from the cold knob of the
future to the hand of the present.
I recalled the first moment I felt you rebel
against your mother--a kick here, a kick there.
I recalled the two bags of Twizzlers
she and I ate and the bond she and I shared
before everything went so terribly wrong. I
tasted each memory--some metallic, some dry
as cotton, some delicious, some spontaneous
like a packet of Pop Rocks, the tiny explosions
that held my tongue hostage. The picture on
the door poured the bombs down my throat,
and I remembered nothing but everything.
Act Four, Them
Cold hands of anonymous nurses struck us to
hear us scream for our lives. They pressed their cold
stethoscopes against our innocent skins and tapped on
the security bars that protected the vaults
beneath our chests. The nurses measured the time
delay between our drumming hearts and their
auditory absorption.
Act Five, Us
We were both born atheists,
but you died an agnostic.
My heart declared itself alive,
but yours fell victim
to a genetic misunderstanding--God tied
your yellow cord with the green cord,
and you paid the price--
you resigned from office
for his mistakes.
We both died at sixteen--your kidneys
held your body hostage for sixteen minutes
before they killed themselves;
in my sixteenth year of life,
I watched you succumb to selfish kidneys
and the honesty of a nurse's sonar.
The anniversary of your death is
the anniversary of my death.
No afterlife comforts me--not Heaven,
not Hell, only a stroll down
the yellow brick road
and into a pale Purgatory,
where I can hear the baby in
Eraserhead
cry all night long, "The Man in the Planet!
The Man in the Planet!"
