The Marriage
For Smith by Adam Brodsky
When you wring death from the newspaper on television
& use that black & white that’s red all over to go green from
& recycle the blues as water for the plant,
food for thought, time away from time:
mucketymuck in a plain brown wrapper…
the ceiling stared at from a hospital gown
glowers, grips, grups, glimmers, groans,
goons, grites, guiles, flaps, goo
picks up the foot & puts yours into it
over & over & over again
because strenuousness is next to godliness
& “cannibal” & “carnival” are synonyms in sour.
Solidarity.
So when the death wrought
in a ring of fire
reminds the world
that it’s still the world
& that world is a rainbow bridge
to light & life
waiting to blow,
it’s time to change the channel to
hoots & hollers
which love loves like like likes:
I do.
I sport.
I swoon.
To dig down…
to dig down deep,
you have to shovel with the hip bone
& spade with the femur
because what’s wrought
is a sprocket
& we are turning…
& turning over
which is grave,
the rock-riled whirl
of what’s under fingernails.
You plunge into the soil of the soul.
You slip under the radar of the rune.
If you want something done right,
do it yourself by yourself.
In this marriage of the self,
the ceiling is the first to go
& then the walls.
Only the wallpaper is left
to write our stories on.
The marriage of flesh & bone is boring.
We learn to bear it & be bared by it
with a grin,
but the silence between words—
like the breath between pains—
takes the oxygen out of the room
where we wait to wait & wait
& where we go, not to die, but to live
like there’s no tomorrow.
– Adam Brodsky