Matthew Zapruder

I hate the phrase “inner life.” My attic hurts, and I’d like to quit the committee for naming tornadoes. Do you remember how easy and sad it was to be young and defined by our bicycles? My first was yellow, and though it was no Black Phantom or Sting-Ray but merely a Varsity I loved the afternoon it was suddenly gone, chasing its apian flash through the neighborhoods with my father in vain. Like being a nuclear family in a television show totally unaffected by a distant war. Then we returned to the green living room to watch the No Names hold our Over the Hill Gang under the monotinted chromatic defeated Super Bowl waters. 1973, year of the Black Fly caught in my Jell-O. Year of the Suffrage Building on K Street NW where a few minor law firms mingle proudly with the Union of Butchers and Meat Cutters. A black hand already visits my father in sleep, moving up his spine to touch his amygdala. I will never know a single thing anyone feels, just how they say it, which is why I am standing here exactly, covered in shame and lightning, doing what I’m supposed to do.

Oh this Diet Coke is really good, though come to think of it it tastes like nothing plus the idea of chocolate, or an acquaintance of chocolate speaking fondly of certain times it and chocolate had spoken of nothing, or nothing remembering a field in which it once ate the most wondrous sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese yet still wished for a piece of chocolate before the lone walk back through the corn then the darkening forest to the disappointing village and its super creepy bed and breakfast. With secret despair I returned to the city. Something seemed to be waiting for me. Maybe the “chosen guide” Wordsworth wrote he would even were it “nothing better than a wandering cloud” have followed which of course to me and everyone sounds amazing. All I follow is my own desire, sometimes to feel, sometimes to be at least a little more than intermittently at ease with being loved. I am never at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk and look at the brightly colored houses filled with lives, not with night when I lie on my back and listen, not with the hallway, definitely not with baseball, definitely not with time. Poor Coleridge, son of a Vicar and a lake, he could not feel the energy. No present joy, no cheerful confidence, just love of friends and the wind taking his arrow away. Come to the edge the edge beckoned softly. Take this cup full of darkness and stay as long as you want and maybe a little longer.

I wish I would like a ship that all night carries its beloved captain sleeping through no weather slip past dawn and wake with nothing but strange things that did not happen to report but I get up in the dark and parachute quietly down to the kitchen to begin the purely mental ritual plugging in of the useless worry machine above me she sleeps like the innocent still dreaming older sister to all gentle things the white screen impassively asks me to say what does not matter does so I shut it down and think about the lake near where I live it’s a lagoon getting lighter like an old blue just switched on television maybe a Zenith it has two arms they stretch without feeling east to embrace an empty park a little light then everything has a shadow I almost hear a silent bell low voices I brought us to this old city the port connects to the world where everyone pretends to know they live on an island waiting for the giant wave in some form maybe radiation in the yard the wind blows the whole black sky looks down for an instant through my sleepy isolate frame a complex child hologram flickers angrily holding a green plastic shovel then disappears leaving an empty column waiting Bill who I knew was so angry is dead whatever he was going through I kept away I never did anything I love his poem he was really good I keep forgetting his last name I always leave his handmade book on my desk not to remember but because for hours after everything everyone says sounds like a language I never knew but now speak spirit I know you would have hated how I think you would have liked this music in another room pushing the alien voice into the millennium the one you left so early spirit you were right all noble things are gone except to struggle and be loved

Drawn by ceremonial obligation up from sleep I woke and stepped into the borrowed black robes all ghost bureaucrats trained to redirect dreaming pretend we do not like to wear. I drove my black car to the stadium to sit on stage and be watched watching young expectant spirits one by one with dread certainty pass before me, clouded in their names. Then listened to no one in their speeches say you’re welcome for allowing us not to tell you it’s already too late to learn anything or defend whatever accidental instrument in us causes all these useless thoughts. Like if you walked for hours through the vast black avenues of those server farms all of us with our endless attention built, you could almost feel the same peaceful disinterest as when your parents talking and smoking raised their heads for a moment to smile and tell you go back upstairs and read the book you love about myths that explain weather and death. Now it is almost June and they are finally the children they always were. So more precise than anyone has ever had to be, go forget everything we told you so you can fix what we kept destroying by calling the future.

Erstwhile means long time gone. A harbinger is sent before to help, and also a sign of things to come. Like this blue stapler I bought at Staples. Did you know in ancient Rome priests called augurs studied the future by carefully watching whether birds were flying together or alone, making what honking or beeping noises in what directions? It was called the auspices. The air was thus a huge announcement. Today it’s completely transparent, a vase. Inside it flowers flower. Thus a little death scent. I have no master but always wonder, what is making my master sad? Maybe I do not know him. This morning I made extra coffee for the beloved and covered the cup with a saucer. Skeleton I thought, and stay very still, whatever it was will soon pass by and be gone.

Drunker than Voyager I but not as Voyager 2 I rode my blue bike back through the darkness to my lonely geode cave of light awaiting nothing under the punctured dome. I had achieved escape velocity drinking clear liquid starlight at the Thunderbird with a fingerless Russian hedge fund inspector and one who called himself The Champ. All night I felt fine crystals cutting my lips like rising up through a hailstorm. And the great vacuum cleaner that cannot be filled moved through my chest, gathering conversation dust and discharging it through my borehole. During one of many silences The Champ took off his face and thus were many gears to much metallic laughter revealed. Long ago I forgot the word which used to mean in truth but now expresses disbelief. So quickly did my future come. You who are floating past me on your inward way, please inform those glowing faces who first gave me this shove I have managed to rotate my brilliant golden array despite their instructions.

Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world is in a delay. All the political consultants drinking whiskey keep their heads down, lifting them only to look at the beautiful scarred waitress who wears typewriter keys as a necklace. They jingle when she brings them drinks. Outside the giant plate glass windows the planes are completely covered in snow, it piles up on the wings. I feel like a mountain of cell phone chargers. Each of the various faiths of our various fathers keeps us only partly protected. I don’t want to talk on the phone to an angel. At night before I go to sleep I am already dreaming. Of coffee, of ancient generals, of the faces of statues each of which has the eternal expression of one of my feelings. I examine my feelings without feeling anything. I ride my blue bike on the edge of the desert. I am president of this glass of water.

In memory of  Vic Chesnutt when I walk to the mailbox holding the letter that fails to say how sorry I am you feel your call or any words at all on that day would have stopped the great singer who long ago decided more quickly through to move I notice probably because you wrote that strange word funeral the constant black fabric I think is taffeta always draped over the scaffolds the figures scraping paint are wearing dusty protective suits and to each other saying nothing I move invisibly like a breeze around three men wearing advanced practically weightless jackets impervious to all possible weather even a hurricane I hear them say something German then photograph the pale blue turrets that floating up in fog seem noble heads full of important thoughts like what revolution could make us happy from some window wandering horns he was three when I was born for a long time I had no ideas my father worked in a private office full of quiet people working I came to visit it seemed correct I went to college studied things dyed my hair felt a rage disguised as love kept escaping suffering only a few broken bones everything healed now I live in California where in some red and golden theater I saw him howl such unfathomable force from only one lung it was one of  his last shows in Athens once many years ago we shared a cigarette a little smoke from our faces I can’t remember so many things but see him in his wheelchair his folded body it’s all gone but for electrons I can still push into my ears I choose the song the perfect one hear his words and see the mirror in the ancient lighthouse blinking brave ships somehow you crossed the water carrying what we need you can rest light as nothing in the harbor we will take it and go on