Implicate is a useless word. You are alone with loss, and with
out it. Try not to veer your eyes away from names and numb
ers on tombstones. No resisting it— Erasure is tedious, an infest
ation in the mind. The only claim the world allows you is that one
day, whether you expect it or not, an encumbrance will knock on
the door. A brittle phenomenon, a hold on your body. How much click
ing must it take to understand that you will hurt in so many joints?
A poet dead, pet, relatives, love. Damn it all: Love holds no hold
on the ego. It dislocates, dislodges. Either you give in first or an
other beats you to it. No one should declare he or she is dying. Fill
in now, all you playing dead. Donate not to the pretense, but to
the blind. Stare at the budding flower and watch how remiss, how pre
dictable tendency is. Count the countless, the repetitive nuan
ances. Permanence will outlive all of us. Fulfill the book, a guy in dread
locks offered. Before succumbing to cancer. Intelligence, you must
be shuddering always in the presence of wisdom. You have been
betrayed from the start, by that fear of laying it all to rest. Fatal
ism, too, is learned, like Latin. Hear the drumfill, feel it in pace.
Marley, 1981 †
MCA, 2012 †
