By Monte Remer
I came by his acquaintance for the first time
and liked him not at all,
though I tried to be cordial
despite the circumstances
and the fact that my grandmother was a lovely woman
but he didn’t return the same courtesy
and in fact put a squirrel under the tires
of my parent’s car on the drive home
which did somewhat open up healing wounds.
Granting him the benefit of the doubt,
I assumed this had to be a mistake
and so I stalked him, like you do the social media
of someone you’re not sure if you like.
From all the books I read, the movies I watched,
but most of all, the things people said of him,
I pretty well made up my opinion.
He’s ever been the expert of adding insult to injury,
so it wasn’t long before my dislike became enmity
when he took someone in my life
randomly, without excuse of illness nor reason why.
So I hunted him out then, a man with a vengeance.
I searched for him in charnel-houses
to put questions to him,
but he was never there to answer.
I did questionable things with friends in his cemeteries,
but he never came to stop us.
I tried to formalize our dispute
by insisting that I would meet him
at a time and place of his choosing
in a duel, the rules laid out and fair
so long as I had twelve hours’ notice.
When he sent nothing back,
I rationalized that it must be for my sake,
thinking I must have misjudged death
and that he was actually merciful and wise
enough to know that my heartbeat
would sound like a clock
every second
until the day
of the duel.
So I tried acceptance
with a woman who I paid too much to see
with so many Buddhas in her office
until I wondered
Why the hell am I doing this?
and promptly left.
And now, I admit to just wanting to see death,
as if I’m the paparazzi for an elusive celebrity.
I’ve tried to shake his hand in skull-laden aesthetics
and I’ve tried to hear his voice
by listening in to funerals on my cemetery jogs
just in case he stuck around to say something of his work.
I’ve grieved for people I’ve only ever seen on screens
as if he’s some deity who demands obeisance
even in distance,
and I’ve reread all those books, rewatched all those movies,
and relistened to all those stories
just in case I was missing something,
in case death was ever more
than what God said to Moses: “I am that I am.”
I’ve been afraid,
I’ve written here about my fear,
I’ve written properly, when all I really want to say is something like
“fuck fuck fuck fuck,”
and sometimes I have stretched moments so much longer than they should be as if that doesn’t come at another moment’s cost, my poems spilling over into prose because I’m afraid, I’m so fucking afraid,
and Lord,
my god,
please, God,
whatever god will save me,
please,
there are so many things I’ll never get to see,
there are so many poems I’ll never get to read.
