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Portrait
of the Writer as a Young Man
It
is Mother's Day and the young man is not at home
when the
blood vessel in his mother's head falls in
on
itself. Boxers speak of being "punch drunk"--
the
body not knowing that the mind has already fallen
so
it moves of its own accord, unsteady.
A
hull-opened ship dollied on the fingers of a flagging wind,
she
comes in from the garden and manages well enough
to
make it to the marriage bed that gave her three children--
all
of whom are away. Her body speaks to her husband.
He
hears only the television. In the arms of canned laughter
she
falls asleep, smiling, not knowing that she is smiling.
Through
the night, her dreams are wet, black clouds
as
a red tide rises inside her skull.
It
is the next day when the young man returns from his trip,
his
arms hugging hard-sought comic books
that
will fill the holes in his collection.
The
house is a ringing chasm he will not see
as
he adds his new gains to his collection--
row
after row of hero under mylar:
Silver
Age X-Men, Golden Age Flash,
Bronze
Age this and that, high quality issues
of
the earliest Captain America--Joe Simon autographed
the
one far, far in the back of the collection.
This
is the one the young man loves most, the one that cost him so
much
money
he had to borrow from his mother because the seller
said
that it was only a matter of time before Simon was dead
and
death always increases the value of common things. (If the
mother
were
here the young man would not consider showing it to her.)
She
lies in a hospital bed, almost an hour's drive away,
her
tongue forgetting how to speak, the left side of her body
seceding,
giving
up its ability to hold him--even if he would still let her--
and
her husband clings to a pay phone, dialing home again
and
again, as the son sprawls across his bed,
eating
one comic book after another. He does not hear the empty house.
He
does not see the half made sandwich drawing flies on the
counter,
the
bucket of vomit in the mother's room, next to her bed,
the
telephone receiver overturned in the living room floor.
His
latest acquisition is the story of Captain America
regaining
his sight after a battle with the Red Skull.
It
is old, but it will outlast the mother. The young man does not
remember
that yesterday was Mother's Day nor does he smell
the
scent of decay as his comic books--silent, unmoving, smiling
as
they lie in their tended beds--decay, completely unaware of him.
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Captain
America Visits the Veterans
Hospital
Even
if a man has been chopped down
to
leglessness and lingering, worshiping
at
the alter of what used to be, he is not without
his
will to be so incomplete and gnawed--
so
human--that he cannot unwrap the bandages
on
his dangling hand and, with groaning
effort
and malice, offer up his middle finger--
"middle"
being inappropriate since the stump
holds
only two branches in its entirety.
But,
it is definitely the middle finger
that
he gives to me, shouting: Hey, Captain
America,
now that you've fucked me, pay me!
Pay
me my severance so that you can walk away.
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After
Alan Dugan
An
Open Letter from the Red Skull
Would
it be that much easier if I went away?
If
I gave up the vintage wardrobe patterned after the SS
and
Death? If I disassembled the repulsor rays,
the
secret submarines I keep beneath arctic waters
just
in case of rainy days and governmental coups?
What
if I turned in my standing army? The militia of minute
men
waiting
to march on wherever, whenever, and for whatever
reason
I happen to make up this week? Then what? Peace?
Do
all of humanity's murder plots cease because I give up mine?
Am
I the fountainhead of Evil? Do planes suddenly fly
straighter
upon
my retirement? Do guns transmute to flora? Knives
to
knitting tools? Can Steve Rogers or Stephen Hawking
honestly
make such an argument? No. Of course not.
But,
still, even I fall victim to the occasional belief
that
I am the one and only God of War. So I take some time off.
I
curl up with a few good books in some quiet corner
of
some far away castle--windows shut, doors locked,
no
incoming calls, no internet, no newspapers, hardly even
sunlight--
and
I call myself a pious monk of peace
and
I call the world a cogent mathematical formula,
a
logic circuit that, without me as a conditional,
will
eventually follow its own path to Truth, to Utopia.
Imagine
my surprise when, starving, half-mad from loneliness,
I
emerge from my sabbatical fully confident that without me,
without
this face, this visage that so much reflects what humanity
is
most
afraid of--bloody Death--the world has become warm, wet roses,
and
I find the Earth still swelling with graves, the sky thick with
ash
and
gun smoke, every boney face of man trying to hide the
blood
beneath
mere millimeters of flesh.
It
is during these early moments, these heady times
of
rebirth, that, like any unwanted child, I know
how
much of yourself you see when you look at me.
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