What we hang on to . . . 

I have a bonsai tree that I killed yesterday. All bare and drowned now. Two different things to mark its death. As if I couldn’t tell. I’m keeping it anyway. That’s the way I hang onto things. The picture of that guy outside the window at the Coney that I know or want to know or have known. It’s still on the wall. Because I think one day I’ll recognize him. Since 1993 or 1995 or something. Maybe he’s dead now. But not on the wall.

People say–lots of them–that I attach myself to bad things like dead people. Most of the people I have ever thought about are dead. My mother hanged Jesus on her wall. My teacher had a picture of Lincoln and of her boyfriend. The Lincoln one was bigger. I’ve never had a car that I owned. They die before I do. The paper from my notebook is on dead trees. My shirt is from dead plants. The burger I ate at the Coney where I took the picture in 1993 or 1995 or something. 

“All Objects get obscured. Underneath.“

My thoughts on that book Middlesex that she told me to read. I hate swimming pools. The water makes things not as real. All Objects get obscured. Underneath. Milton is a dead father, but also a dead poet, and the book doesn’t talk about that. That’s hidden too. And I learned that you have to be a man to keep the dead ghost dads out. But it’s a made-up story so I don’t believe it. 

I took it. I added a page from Milton the dead poet to my wall but I tucked it a little behind the Coney picture because one has been dead for longer and I’m less likely to recognize Milton from his words. I can read lots of it from here, but the line that keeps looking at me is “life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose.” It’s about books but that part is hidden behind the 1993 or 1995 guy. It could be about anything now. The bonsai. This notebook. Ghost dads who still hang in the hallway. The guy from the Coney who has never told me his name. Life beyond life. But I don’t see any poetry in that.