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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Atticus on August 24, 2004, at 15:27:03
Ned’s Dead
Ned’s dead, I tell myself,
Ned’s dead.
And all the
Saccharine-soaked
Susurrations,
Breaking like soft ocean waves
Upon
The undertaker’s tongue,
Can’t sugar-coat
That diamond-hard
Brutal fact
As I stand,
Fixated,
In front of the coffin
Of my cousin,
Who was only 27,
Just six years younger
Than me.And I know the
Stoop-shouldered funeral director’s
Only doing his job,
But I still feel
Like
Punching the SOB
Squarely
In the nose
And snapping
His wire-rimmed
Spectacles
In two
For subjecting me
To his stream
Of meaningless,
By-the-numbers,
Solicitous drivel
At a moment
As overwhelming
As this one.Ned’s laid out
In his full-dress
Army sergeant’s uniform,
An array of brightly colored
Citations and medals
Affixed to his chest
Like mounted butterflies.
But it’s his face
That holds me
Frozen,
Numbly taking in
The wasted features,
The sunken cheeks,
The head made hairless
By countless rounds
Of chemotherapy.
Christ almighty,
I think,
If he had a few wrinkles,
He could pass
For 90.Non-Hodgkins lymphoma
Had engulfed
The entire left side
Of his rib cage,
Squeezing the air
From his left lung
Like a hungry anaconda
Before wrapping itself
Around his aorta
And tearing it open.
Ned had just
Called his father, Steven,
To pick him up
At the hospital
After a four-hour round
Of intensive chemotherapy.
Then he sat next
To our cousin Kathy,
Gave a slight cough,
And unleashed a torrent
Of blood from his mouth
That was so dark
It looked
More black
Than red.
His head flopped
To the left
And landed
In Kathy’s lap,
As the hot juice
Continued
To cascade
From between his lips.
He was dead
In seconds.
I can’t
Even begin
To imagine
What went through
Steven’s mind
When he walked
Into the waiting room
And was greeted
By this scene,
And the screaming
Of his sister-in-law
As she cradled
What had been
His youngest son
A mere
Ten minutes earlier.And as I caress
The casket’s
Polished veneer
Lightly
With my right fingertips,
I remember
Ned’s vital,
Hulking,
Six-foot-four
Presence
Towering over me
Just a year ago
At my sister’s
Fourth of July
Cookout.
Now his pinched,
Rouged and painted
Countenance
Resembles
Fragile papyrus,
Straining to cover
The skull beneath
His papery skin,
Every detail
Of every bone
Making up the hard
And unyielding
Landscape
Supporting
His embalmed flesh
Plainly visible
Despite
A mortician’s
Best efforts.And though they’re bound
In my usual
Ace-bandage
Mummy wrappings,
And lie unseen
Beneath
A white cotton dress shirt
And a dark flannel
Suit jacket,
The three red
Scars
That start
At my left wrist
And run up
My left forearm
Along the veins
Like ragged
Scarlet
Lightning bolts
Have never felt
So exposed,
Because every relative
In the funeral home
Knows
That while Ned
Was fighting
Like hell
To survive,
I was
Locked
In a psych ward
For trying
To throw away
The very thing
He was battling
To preserve.A sense of guilt
Descends
Upon me
Like a shroud,
And after I glance
At the shocked
Thousand-yard stare
On the tear-slicked faces
Of Ned’s parents,
My eyes move
To my mother
To my sister
To my brother
And I can all too easily
Imagine
The same emptiness,
The same hollowness
In my family’s eyes
If the suicide attempt
Had succeeded
And it was me
Filling
That mahogany box
Lined
With white silk.After the service,
We file outside,
The only sounds
Under the overcast sky
An occasional muffled sob,
The idling
Of a hearse’s motor,
And,
Incongruously,
The ringing laughter
Of children
Absorbed in play
During recess
At the grammar school
Adjoining
The church property.An Army honor guard
Crisply removes
The American flag
Draped over Ned’s
Closed casket.
Their leader
Folds it
Into a triangle
And hands it to Steven,
Who takes it
Out of sheer reflex,
His eyes fixed,
Utterly unblinking,
On some distant
And unfathomable
Place
That only
He can see.Seven soldiers
From Ned’s unit
Form a line
In the field
Between the church
And the school,
Aim their rifles skyward,
Then fire
Three times,
A 21-gun salute
That draws the children
To the chain-link fence
Dividing their playground
From the wide, grassy patch
Adjoining the church’s parking lot.
They watch,
Clinging
To the metal wires,
Faces pressed
Against the barrier’s
Diamond-shaped
Spaces,
Curious and alert
As the sharp retort
Of the blanks
Slowly
Rolls away.A bugler begins
To play taps,
And this simple,
Direct,
Unbearably mournful
Sound
Finally achieves
What hours of
Homilies by priests
And tributes by family members
Have failed to do,
Unleashing searing tears
That burn
Like scalding water
As they slide
Down my face
And drip
From my chin.
And with each throb
Of my wrist,
I weep as much
From shame
As from grief.I move uncertainly
At the wake,
Feeling vaguely
Like my second chance
At life
Was somehow
Bought with Ned’s death,
As cosmic scales
That I had set teetering
Sought
To rebalance themselves.
Unexpectedly,
I come face to face
With Ned’s mother, Marge,
As I step
From the kitchen
To the living room,
Her eyes bloodshot,
Rimmed in red,
And without thinking about it,
I give her a long hug.
Marge whispers
A watery “Thank you,”
Then says
She needs to get
More hors d’oeuvres.
I slip past her,
Standing slumped
In a corner
By the couch.I can hear
Heavy raindrops
Striking
The large window
To my right,
A relentless drumbeat,
And I wonder
How to best
Make the second chance
I’ve been handed
And that Ned
Was denied
Count for something
That will make me
Feel better
About being
The survivor.
-- Atticus
Posted by Jai Narayan on August 24, 2004, at 20:43:49
In reply to poem ... Ned's Dead, posted by Atticus on August 24, 2004, at 15:27:03
You poem transported me to the edge of the coffin. You ability to do that is such a gift of crafting words.
your poems are a dance of words and images in an acending spiral.
The images pulse with life as they inhale... drawing the action in and then exhale in a release... 21 gun salute..inhale the children at the fence....out.
Is this the rhythm your heart beat?How do you know when the poem is done?
Do the images end?
How do you know a poem is coming? are they stimulated by outer situations or do they rise up unbidden?
Once again, loved reading your poem.
It's a great way to end a sucky day.thanks
Posted by malthus on August 24, 2004, at 20:55:58
In reply to poem ... Ned's Dead, posted by Atticus on August 24, 2004, at 15:27:03
You don't look at the past just once, and you look at it with the knowledge of the present, which was the future. I like that going over, seeing an event through other events that have occurred since, seeing it again and seeing it in a different way, from a different perspective as time goes on.
malthus ;-)
Posted by Atticus on August 25, 2004, at 9:16:58
In reply to Re: poem ... Ned's Dead, posted by Jai Narayan on August 24, 2004, at 20:43:49
Hi Jai,
Sorry that you had a rough day yesterday. It's interesting that you picked up on my emphasis on rhythm, because that's an aspect of a poem that is important to me. For the poems about my teenaged years, I try to bring a rat-tat-tat, driving, punk-rock, staccato rhythm to the work; that's meant to reflect how my mind and emotions and perceptions seemed to operate at the time, and how I likely would have narrated the story if I was actually telling it back when it happened (I always use present tense -- I think it brings a greater sense of immediacy to what I'm trying to get the reader to experience). And for poems set in my "Tyrannosaurus Meds" period, I try to bring a quicksilver, angry beat to the lines and line breaks. Yet for "Ned's Dead," the rhythm is slower, more elegiac. And whenever a write about Pez, I notice later that the poems collectively tend to have some of the most elegant language and upbeat rhythms to them; that hasn't been conscious as much as a result of what thinking about her does for me emotionally. So I guess, ultimately, the rhythm of a particular poem is, as you suggest, in sync with the rhythm of my heart at that particular moment. But that changes day to day and even hour to hour. I mentioned before how I need to alternate tales of my misspent youth :) with pieces about life after 1996 when the depression really slammed me and took over my perceptions. Too many post-1996 poems can drag me too far down -- too much slow rhythm.
Actually, you set "Ned's Dead" in motion with your discussion thread about the wheat-based communion wafer in Social-Babble. That led my mind to drift to the last time I took communion, which was at Ned's funeral in late July. And that in turn elicited powerful emotional memories of how I felt at the event. The trigger was strong enough that this poem edged to the front of the line ahead of two other ideas for poems I had rattling around in my head. So I knew if I didn't get this one out first, it was just going to interfere with my ability to write the others. It's usually some little trigger that sets my mind on a particular event and brings me emotionally to a certain place; that's why the chronology is so helter-skelter.
The ending of a poem often takes me by surprise. I suddenly realize that I've laid out enough images to say what I wanted or needed to say, and so I wrap it up, and any unused images just end up on the cutting-room floor, so to speak. Hope you have a better day today. ;) Atticus
Posted by Atticus on August 25, 2004, at 9:26:54
In reply to Re: poem ... Ned's Dead » Atticus, posted by malthus on August 24, 2004, at 20:55:58
Memories to me always seem like a stack of transparencies, and as a new one is added, the juxtaposition of a new image with an older one creates something that I didn't previously perceive in the older one alone. The funeral definitely colored and reframed how I thought about the suicide attempt and myself. Atticus
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