Elegy for the Already Drowned

There are things

that can't be said,

can't be drawn and quartered

can't be spatchcocked

over the burning coals of Redemption Song

Won't you help me? can't you help me?

can't you stop me, at least?

-

Unsaved and unspoken,

derailed and drunken—woken token not given (you're alive, is that not enough?)

There are things (big, bold, brash, and necessary)

that can't be unsaid,

can't be choked out or snuffed out by hands round your elegant long neck or by a drawn pistol or sword.

life imitates other people's recollections, solid.

I wished I couldn't have been but I can't erase,

can't become what I should have been before time.

Hack back hack back at everything but fact,

at everything but the meaning.

-

Bob Hope said something, I'm sure, he said... something

"It's a wonderful world. It may destroy itself

but you'll be able to watch it all on TV."

-

Deeply unsettling deeply unsettled, distilled

-

There are things... I need to say,

"I'm not interested in closure. Some people just have heart attacks and die, right? There's no closure."-Larry David

-

I will wear my contemptible smile in the rain like a coat to protect the already drowned.

-

The latest case? A series of abductions. The usual suspects, naturally.

Diligent. Embittered. Disenfranchised. Stoic we are.

-

Rosetta tablature dressed in the sap of the tree that stood

-

A finger on the pulse, on the something anyway.

There are things I must say—about greed and poverty,

about that line “You’ve got to be in it to win it.” —Tony Robbins

Woah woah woah a — Tony cliché

Tony robbins

tony

tony robing

tony

tony robbings

-

"I don't believe you ever get closure on anything. Things leave a permanent mark on you." - Allison Anders

-

vertical space helps

breakdown breaths

stutter goes the looped glitch of the life

-

I forgot how much I hate the neglect—

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: Poem. Yes. I wanted to use an Author's Notes to say "Poem". About closure, rupture, culturally, and personally. Has quotes trying to provide meaning, slogans gaslighting the suffering, unasked for survival, and the absurdity of closure.

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Redemption Song is, for those unfamiliar, a song by the late, great Bob Marley. There are three versions of this song that I love. All by artists I'd consider late and great. Here they are for your listening pleasure.