Another Last Day. Alex Lemon
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I do not know who put me in the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my sense, nor my soul.
—BLAISE PASCAL
Perhaps that’s what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, I’m neither one side nor the other, I’m in the middle, I’m the partition, I’ve two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps that’s what I feel, myself vibrating, I’m the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I don’t belong to either.
—SAMUEL BECKETT
ANOTHER LAST DAY
I
all this time
death has refused
to take me & now
when the willows
darken from my chest rips
a flame-winged black-
bird my bones knot
with goodbyes breaking
to not be a carousel
whirring darkly
II
ambulance lights
in the distance throb
my blood & in my guts
I feel my home
on fire
my family
singing ablaze
from fire-curtained
windows—we are good
we are good—they croon
but it is too late always
now too bright
III
forever along the river
it is a hot hot gust
today I welcome
fat raindrops welcome
whirlwind & hello coming
darkness where am I
IV
sun-bleached mannequins
rise into the sky
from the bruised water
empty birdcages bend
low the lilacs
a torn orange dress
I long ago yearned to
wear laces the brambles
without knowing
what I am
I go
V
when I look down
there is nothing
of me but a ragged duffel
bag sinking into the shallows
two babies are zipped up in it
or just one baby
besides me
it is suffocating
in here it is dark
I would be anything else
sunflower black ice
prickly pear
this life of heat
waving apparitions
I am tumbling king
protea pothole
I am asleep I
am drowning
VI
in the parking lot
a thousand hisses punch
above me in the hot wind
the lights burr on
night puckers with blinks
inside my chest
there is a flowering fist
an empty can herky-jerks
across the humid-slick asphalt
I too am a glassbreak hum
from the coal black beyond
the blinding lights
suddenly falls wet
sizzling needles
VII
the drizzle makes
the pearled darkness
all around me
terrible & lovely
soon it is pouring
I have never wanted
anything
growing
puddles perfectly swallow
the gloaming the murk
fluttering with thousands
of tiny mouths roaring