USA

chagedorn1@aol.com

Our Best Loved Waltzes
(for Jonathon Cisneros)

It's possible we have too much
information about the way "life works."
Who would have thought the morning, with
all its potential, would bring a private resolution
(over coffee with friends) to "keep things out,"
as though experience required editing even as it
washed over your skin, some bitchy but necessary obsession
with key lights and camera angles, ideas
about art brought down to the comfortable
level of catering, the legendary hours in 
make-up that made Miss Dietrich...well, Miss Dietrich.

Not that I'm not
as sentimental about fearlessness as the next guy,
the beauty of flying brave flags on a promenade
down a dirty street -- a well-laid punch into
the solar plexus of sheer ignorance eliciting tears
of purest admiration but, somehow, no
impulse to join in, turn out the closets for a 
stained bed sheet (sprinkled with spring flowers) and 
leftover paint to make a banner defining
the moment which, from my place teetering
on the edge of the curb, has already passed, disappeared
in a tornado of paper and colored cellophane.

It's too fragile to believe in for any length of time, which
may be the problem, anyway.  Casually bending
over backwards to check the straightness 
of the drawn-on seams running down into your 
sling-back pumps eventually becomes 
a full-time occupation, gets lost in its own particular bitterness--
all the wild joys unshared, grimy from being handled,
put away "for later."  Better to sink directly
into the tediously bourgeois than watch your wardrobe
trade its color for a cut that hides what time has taught you, props
up a hollow head on a slim stalk of ivory silk shot through with silver.

Happiness most likely lies elsewhere, under snow, some other
place where no-one else is looking.  I'm tempted
to say "life" has no meaning, except that we feel that it does, walking
halfway home down some dangerous avenue clotted with people we
fear are carrying the disease of sadness and regret, marveling
at the slippery maroon plastic furniture in the window of the "Going
Out of Business Sale," injection-molded into coiled promises of endless
nights of hot, Tinsel Town sex on greasy polyester sheets.  Climbing
into the popcorn-scented breeze from the "better" part of town, rung to
rung up shiny aluminum ladders forged from the kind and necessary illusions we 
maintain about each other and ourselves, slightly above the headlights
of the oncoming taxis, and the rest of the world, now swept by Lotto fever.

Pride

Perhaps it really is "the failure of love" -- this place -- and not the
Whole truth, some animal memory of the way things are, and
Yet with what wild joy still do I greet the actual dawn, appearing
At 5 a.m., discretely indicating the beginning of yet another
Day through the delicate, dirty fleur-de-lis of
My stained-glass transom.  Like the arrival
Of Spring, the tremors of earth as the ice slowly starts to 
Crack and water flows down the mountain in ever increasing
Streams, these mornings add up, layer upon layer, picture on picture
Until, flipping through them in the mind like a scrapbook, their
Forward movement becomes apparent -- that this is what it's like
To be alone and of a "certain age," neither good nor bad, happy or sad though
Tears do come unbidden at these hours, prodded by a song, a scene
In an early movie, a somber story issuing from the cheerful mouth of
The normally giddy anchorwoman.  When will my story reach
The air, be born into someone else's consciousness gasping for breath so
That they turn in my direction, turn though I am no longer there to catch
A shadow of the beauty that, all along, seemed so self-evident
That I never thought to ask for guarantees, receipts, the slightest
Proof, a willing witness to corroborate, in writing, what wonders
Once were here.  Far easier, in fact, for us to harbor
These secrets from each other, clinging like drowning angels to the spark
That flared into what now we call our "selves," individual
Lives that curve and cross like freeways, the tension between each
Centrifugal motion, almost but never quite out of control, maintained
By gargantuan effort, massive pilings of concrete
And steel.  What floods of tenderness wait behind these man-made
Marvels, these declarations of power over chaos and nature?  Do you know?

For I am at a loss today even to make the effort to spin up a clear, sharp
Edged solution, even knowing my need to be known as someone
Who does just that, forcing you to spend hours with your back to the easel
Only to surprise at the last second before you storm out with 
A portrait that, if not exactly accurate, contains so many shades and colors
That any portion of it is impossible to completely deny.
Little wonder so many have passed by, or through
A life that increasingly finds it difficult to balance and bear the weight
It carries, the accretion of detail upon detail, cliché's of overdue bills
And dust in the corners and a slight but rasping cough flown like a 
Brave little flag lost in the larger parade of people rushing to the Ark, 
Two by twos of millions divided into pairs, separated into groups, organized
In manageable clusters like sugar crystallizing on a piece of string, 
Part of a microscopic order, requiring a strong glass to perceive its 
Elements, how each depends upon the other for support, existence, how the
Slightest change -- a breath of wind, a drop of moisture, a careless touch can
Cause the whole thing to crumble, melt and fall and to begin again.  This being
The price of happiness, accepting everything one does do not wish to, opening
The door to possibilities of pain that may swoop down again to darken
The sky and kill, randomly and without mercy, everyone whom my heart
Holds dear.  The people I have loved, perhaps, following a trail of
Bread crumbs, coins, shiny things purchased at great price and without
Value except as talismans, artifacts of a grand and glorious
Civilization which all of us remember like a slim and quickly moving
Figure captured in the corner of our eye, then gone but not forgotten,
Treasured as evidence of the unseen things that bind us, that make
Today into a holiday.

Family Newsletter

Why should it come as a surprise, that the days
End up being mostly cliché, endless expanses
Of glaring whiteness waiting hopefully
To be filled with everything you never had, but somehow
Can't have anymore -- even though lately
You've been doing everything "right," or at least
Have remained so motionless
Relative to the rest of the world that your sins
Could only be those of omission.

So why even bother to go through with it?
The bridges all incinerated behind you, the forward path
Uncertain at worst, at best probably more of the same:
Occasional moments of clarity and feeling surrounded
On three sides by slick, black water stretched tight to
A flat horizon.

Still, it's not exactly an occasion for sorrow, is it?
Finding yourself at the end of your own particular world
Is exactly where you wanted to be, here
On this peninsula of dull pain you have finally
Reached the solution to the first half of your life.
You may now go on to the essay question, 
Which fortunately for you has always been a snap.

After all, what better place for your ship to finally
Come in than on the very edge of life?  Your
vision un-obscured except to landward, where
Row after row of gray hills cradle the morning fog until the sun
Is at its height -- or sometimes even longer, late into the afternoon.
Therefore, you wait, weighing the alternatives:
The golden messenger gliding on winged feet over the water,
Or the dark carriage emerging from the grimy foothills
To bear you unwilling away to destinations all the more 
Fearsome for being known -- the cluttered apartment, the bench
Outside the coffee shop, the enduring silence
Of confusion stunned beyond regret.

Little wonder you always turn to the sea, scanning the glassy surface
For signs of life, though keeping an almost too-respectful
Distance, breathless with the image of being drawn
Into that gigantic mirror, disappearing without evidence 
Of ever having gotten this far:  the almost irresistible 
Compulsion of the acrophobic, the second between jumping
And falling where flight is possible, borne up by fictions of
Holidays past -- the lives joined with yours over time and space,
The maple, split by freak lightning, bleeding sweetness
And profit onto the snowy ground.

Traveling With Ray
(for Ray Gish)

How much more
it might have meant, a few years ago, on a train
passing a row of houses strung along a lakeshore to
have had you there.  Answering questions, making
it all seem "normal" to be running away from something, a bunch
of "somethings:"  people with names and faces and stories
to tell which all seemed beside the point on a circuit
of the country with no goal but to obscure its ultimate destination, back
where I started, the dog chasing, the snake eating the
clichéd tail.  Yeah, "love" which gets renewed without even
having to stand in line for it, requires no identification, in fact, it's
criminal how easy it is to start the whole thing over again.

Which is one way to look at it.  Clinging to that the way you cling to 
your twenty year-old body as the way you actually look, the ideal
representation of "you," not so much physical as the best container
for the person you want to be, wise and foolish and full of hope, believing
in the way a particular shirt hangs off your shoulders like armor that
drifts like smoke into the nostrils of your enemies, causing lust and
confusion, just the way you imagined it in the steamed-up mirror
after your "disco nap."  Where did I lose that?  Only to find it again 
in a succession of model smiles, drowning in admiration for anyone
who somehow seemed to be able to keep certain balls
in the air, with the sense to wait for the opportunity to fall, lightly
without speaking to the unimaginably soft pillows of actual release,
the appropriate music playing without ceasing and ever-changing as
though one had actually spent the time to figure out the cold
technology whereby that happens, can happen without any
sort of magic at all.

So my mind turns to weathered shingles and P-town, or your row 
of white buildings backed by a towering wood.  Not so much a person as a path
through some non-local underbrush, an actual timetable, the thrill of being able to mark
the entire future up to account, the realization that no-one believes in me so much as
the Chase Manhattan Mastercard which, thus far, has provided
me with all my dreams...seriously, as if that were the ultimate thing, opening
the present you've bought for yourself and finding it's exactly what you wanted.
"This modern life."  "It is to laugh."  Knowing it all turns upon you.  Well, not you, 
exactly, but me, if that makes sense, the difference between me and the parade
of "you," none of whom is so distinct as to make me forget myself and the
responsibility which is mine, an indebtedness to the vaguely cruddy world which 
spits me out the moment I forget how important it is to remember time,
the kind that counts you out one minute and in another discovers
there is water on the moon.

Excelsior

What is to be done?  Evening falls early down avenues
And streets, stranding us in twos and threes in pools
Of deepening light as music starts and flares go up
From forbidden cigarettes, reflected in glowing limpid
Liquors slaking thirsts for passion, understanding, love,
Forgetfulness.

Each comprising countless universes, constantly in motion.
Creating unimaginable colors, set off by darkness of space
Between us, infinitesimal and infinite, the random physics
Of attraction and repulsion precipitating a shimmer of rising
Heat that evaporates in cool wind from an open door.

In this electric atmosphere, time means nothing, the future meets
The past again, and again, over and over continues revolving
Behind bright eyes searching distant figures slowly coming
Into view, back-lit and beautiful, partially visible, briefly
Whole, then dissolving once more in a haze of smoke.

Only a glimpse of the moon and stars, reeling over the rooftops.
A hand, extended, merges with your own then passes through,
Like mist, gathering your glass to be filled, filled and emptied
Continuously celebrating mysteries unknown, fearsome powers,
Accidental impulses, uncontrollable actions and reactions but
Somewhere at the center, your heart's desire, complete for a moment
Then gone again, lost in the history of night.

© All Copyright, Curtis R. Hagedorn.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.