No self-respecting man
describes their height to the half-inch
but every man who
actually terminates at the half-inch
rounds up.
This wisdom is encoded
as a hidden gift
to you
when I tell you simply
& without reflection
that
I am six feet tall.
And when I say
that I went to grad school in London
there is a moment
where the idea of me
seems slightly more intriguing
then it does after I clarify
London, Ontario.
Whether or not
you know implicitly
that my saying
"I've lived in Buenos Aires"
also means
"I know how to avoid
getting pick-pocketed on the train"
depends not
on your idea of me
but on
your idea of you
and your idea of the world
and all the frames and scaffolding
that bind your thoughts
comprehensively and
contemporaneously together.
When I was a child
my ideas of the world
were bounded
by the limits of my legs
and the imperative
to be home in time for dinner.
In that world
I remember
losing the sun
beneath an endless tangle of
wooded wilds
and catching frogs in the swampy pond
hidden like a witches coven
at its heart;
I remember
carrying my Star Wars action figures
to play with Paul on his back step
hours spent inventing
new mythologies for ideas
of good and evil;
I remember
playing road hockey
with the other boys
in the neighborhood
the winter afternoon
so frigid
that to be hit by the ball
was to welt from the sting
of a thousand wasps;
I remember
us gathering in Steve's basement
to listen to Iron Maiden
for the first time
on his dad's stereo,
the excitement as he ripped the cellophane
off the album and
the crackle-hiss of the needle
that preceded the onslaught of guitars
and the operatic,
almost alien vocals;
I remember
at the playground, or once
at the corner store,
when the pain of some indignity
was worse than the fear
of getting punched in the face,
and a favorite t-shirt was lost
to the contents
of a bloody nose;
I remember
with an almost
preternatural clarity
the cover of a Maclean's magazine
left lying on the table
union jack stretching in from the left
triband flag of baby blue and white
stretching in from the right
each pulled together in
a vice-like knot
so tight that both flags
dripped blood.
The headline in capitals
WAR.
I didn't understand why
but this image mesmerized me.
The names Falklands and Thatcher are there
inside
along with a photograph of a battleship
dull grey in an ocean of blue.
This memory,
this idea of an idea I once experienced,
appears suddenly to me one afternoon
sitting in Palermo
as she tells me about
the betrayl of general Galtieri
and las Islas Malvinas
and the young Argentine men
under-provisioned and misled
whose blood I saw
as a young boy
on the cover of that magazine
on the kitchen table
a long time ago
in a galaxy far, far away.
He is still there
mesmerized
but I am behind him
hand on his shoulder
together a key
to the cryptograph.
#poetry #writing #philosophy #memory