I remember it was November a few years ago. I'd been at work all day, and through part of the evening. It was a routine sort of day. Until, I got one of those phone calls, the type that everyone dreads. My mom's trembling voice was on the other end, struggling to exhale her words, "Grandpa, is in the hospital. He's on a ventilator, they're keeping him alive until the family arrives. Can you make it here?" "Of course." CLICK. Thirty minutes later, I pulled aside a hanging cloth door and stepped into another dimension. Twenty of my family members, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, parents, grandparent were all standing in a tight perimeter, circling my dying grandfather. The machines beeped rhythmically, pale blue tubes ran down his throat, as I watched his chest peacefully rise and fall like waves rolling through the surf.
     It was one of the most beautiful nights of my life, and yet I'll forever miss my grandfather. Death is something that units us all, while at the same time it separates us. What if you had some fix on the events of your life? The ability to have a conversation with yourself on your death bed, what questions would you have? I wonder what my grandfather would have said, if he had the opportunity to give a younger version of himself some advice. Bacon and beer won't kill you. Jorge Loius Borges August 25, 1983 tells of how one man has the chance to talk to himself on his death day. The story is written with rich environmental detail. Bringing to life an interesting concept, to know the totality of your accomplishments. It really intensifies destinies role. When the younger version defies the older version of himself, claiming he won't fulfill some of the events that has lead him to this death bed, the older version says matter of factly, "Yes you will." Once the ball is rolling its hard to stop it. We find the same thing in Dino Buzzati's The Falling Girl.
    A young girl hurls herself off of a skyscraper, in a contradictory rush to reach the bottom. The main character acknowledges that there is no going back, there is no stopping our march towards death. She has the strength to momentarily slow down, which I find interesting, it may point to the things she was missing from life. Her desires to have more time for romantic pursuits, as she slows for the gentlemen on a balcony and taps him on the nose. Never escaping the relenting pull of gravity, which is used as a metaphor for death. Are we being pulled to it? Or is it rushing towards us? That cataclysmic collision is mind shattering, life ending, life bringing, mind altering, rushing and exploding, brilliantly, and radiantly, the star ashes twinkle, full of secrets.

     After reading the packet that was assigned to us. A couple of the pieces really stuck out to me. I enjoyed Michael Van Wallenghen's poem Walking the Baby to the Liquor Store. His precision for word choice adds an ambiguous sense of purpose for walking the baby. On going to the liquor store he says, and I quote "Believe me, I wouldn't miss these excursions for the world. I wouldn't miss them even if it meant giving up the National Book Award." He's willing to give up a book award for his trip to the liquor store. The baby is just how he rationalizes taking the walk every day. As he comes home, immediately he has a drink, puts the baby to sleep and passes out on the porch. The poem ends with a bleak passage.

     The last line "...watching the fireflies coming on and going out again in the long grass like so many sparks flying off the anvil of the world." Is such a beautiful line. It evokes this primal sense of creation, banging on the anvil, forging the world.  But I ask myself what type of world is he forging for his baby, as he's passed out on the porch?

     The other piece I enjoyed was Wallet by Allen Woodman. The story picks up with an old man who's been pick-pocketed and he's intent on playing a trick on the thief. His actual baiting process, is written well by Woodman, describing this bumbling old man that's really hamming it up dangling a fat worm on a hook. It's comical because you get this sense that the old man really wanted no contact with the thief other than giving him a bogus wallet. Was it a waste of the thieves time? Was it a waste of the old man times? Or the narrators? As Woodman says. "Life is the same old story told over and over." The thief tries to run, the old man tries to run, the narrator runs. And so the world goes on running. 

     Inescapably, we characterize, categorize, and conceptualize a world perceived by our very own human brains. Our brains are particularly good at pattern recognition. Its the difference between stopping with traffic at a red light once you realize a sea of break lights signifies deceleration; and mistaking the stripped fur and size of a tiger for the common house cat. Pattern distinction is an essential part of surviving. If you realize that gravity constantly forces you to the floor every time you jump off the last step coming down the stairs, you'll apply that pattern of jump and fall to everything else.
     I make this point because, like life poetic verse relies on distinct patterns. The more amiable that pattern is the more relatively accepted the poem. But what happens when any sensible pattern is undetectable? Our brains immediately become engaged in discovering its existence. So much so that to not find a pattern triggers an overt dislike or rejection. Particularly when verse lapses intro prose and the message is so convoluted, you may as well pour out a can of alphabet soup and decipher any hidden meaning you can. But why not enjoy the soup? Soup and poetry are both cooked in a relatively small pot, allowing all of their flavors to amalgamate. The mistake is thinking that they were ever anything different. Don't read so much into the message, just tell me how it tastes.