Futile Efforts (52 page)

full of gas.
 
He'd had two beers and a couple of shots of Tequila

but his nerves were gone and it had been enough

to topple him over the rim.

I was going to do it, he said.
 
But I can't get my fingers

to work anymore.
 
My coordination is off.

Dude, I said,

you invite me over for a beer and you're gonna blow up

the house?
 
Have I

offended you that bad?

No, he said, I just forgot you were coming over.

You called me ten minutes ago.
 
It's the kind of thing you ought

to remember.

Sorry, but I haven't been thinking clearly lately.

But he had, I saw, been pretty sharp about that.
 
If you're going to go

out in a furnace of blue flame,

taking with you all that you've got,

the unsold manuscripts and the wasted paintings,

the photos and the dying plants, the busted

toilet tank, the debts and the diarrhea,

the wrinkled spank
mags
you've had since you were fourteen,

the dirty windows and the bed

your ex- never made,

you'd want to go out with a friend.

For love or for mercy,

for repressed jealousy or old times, for the women

once hoarded and those who weren't,

for the stray dogs fed,

the brotherhood of shared pain,

the anguish of alliance,

our family of lost priests who can speak the word

of the Lord

no more.

I took away his matches and turned off the gas,

laid one into his gut until he was coughing blood,

grabbed the Tequila,

went home and called a girl from high school

I hadn't talked to in ten years.
 
She was just sitting there

with nothing to do.

Jones Beach, Thirty Years After the

Last Sand Castle

The laughter is hysteria-laced but human, long gone

yet still echoing, sweeping up the beach alongside

the tide, thick with sunlight and seagulls, orange sherbet

in wafer cones, comic books—my father brought me here

before he died and afterwards. We've visited together

many times since-he was gone by the year

I was seven, but he came back at ten,

often in winter when it was too cold to swim

and he'd bring his summer grin and lead me in

where the dunes rose, near the goldfish ponds where

the old men dozed, the showers which swept sand and salt

swirling into the drains of lost time. My brother once

buried me,

my mother buried my father,

my brother and I buried our mother—somehow, I'm

told, this

is the way of surf and storms, the way of worms,

natural, acceptable, eventually affirmed. The others

grow gray, I've gotten some gray, and we wait for the day

to stalk back to the beach when we shall remember

who we are, and why we're here, and how, and when

but I've never forgotten,

and for that I can only blame

my blood and my pen.

The shells are dust,

the kitten bones in the back yard

are earth again, my father's tombstone now bears

my mother's name as well. You never stop learning

about yourself—for example: At the funeral

four months ago, the priest with his distinguished voice

questioned us at length, my brother

taking the cue in his new black shoes, answered—

see, I couldn't talk yet, I had nothing to say—

and he said our father, with his black features

and Mediterranean blood pressure, his weakness

for cancer, was from Sicily and not Naples,

which is what I'd always believed

and now understood to be untrue—

I didn't know my father and did not know myself—

there are realizations still being made every day,

each night,

and some will undermine or redefine or confine.

My outline changes with different angles and lighting,

but my shadow remains mine.

They still point you at your sister—when you were eight

she went off to the special school, a new home upstate

and for a while you visited every year—on Easter—or

on her birthday in the middle of winter. She'd clap

and smile

and .utter in her jittering way—speechless

except for a few half-formed words,

her grunts and squawks, lipstick

thick on her teeth, on her chin,

her name a name you no longer pronounced,

until only your old day and a couple of cousins

went to visit. This is the way of it.

Now the old lady is gone

and the cousins have broods of knee-high

screamers. You're forced, step by step,

into responsibilities that hold too much meaning,

and you walk along the well-trimmed lawns and ease

into the halls of freshly-painted walls. The faces

loom up too fast, too near,

the noises human but not quite recognizable

as you stand waiting for the familiar dance

of a sister you have not seen in twenty years,

imagining what it is she thinks,

what she fears as she approaches from the other end of

her world,

and how similar that might be to your own panicked

contemplation.

Her gaze holds you swaying, perhaps dying

or losing a touch more of mind, the scraping of personality,

and you wonder just which one of you it is

they'll eventually let out of here.

Your scars don't quite travel the length of your body

They end here and here, which isn't quite near

as you think—

the old man is rummaging in the fridge again, screaming

for beer—the twist-tops leave the mark of Cain inside

his palms,

at the throat and under the ears are bags of gray

wrinkles he begs

you to carry out to the trash—this is the history of

fear in action,

set in motion by nature—he was at least as young as you

once, but never

quite figured out how to steer around the sharp curves,

the exit signs always

going by too quickly, the off-ramps cluttered—he

never learned

to shift into fourth gear, to parallel park, to change a tire—

there are things

you must do now for your father, whether he's still alive

or not—you

must polish the picture frames, consume the pot roast,

buy your mother

fresh towels, and wait, there's more—

you must put the dog down, empty the contents of your

eyes, swindle

the neighbor and wipe away the tears—he sits at your

left hand

for a reason, he's that much more able to pry and to peer,

and the world doesn't quite look as ripe anymore—go to

the garage

and sit, turn the key,

back out safely, watch for small children,

never look in your mirror again—it's been a pretty damn

bad day,

and remember—you were never really here.

Maybe it was true what they taught us back then

about the sandbars of sins, the snapping forest traps

of potential failure and fear—perhaps they were

in our backyards all along, like the legends laid out

against the cool stone and brick, the nearby scent

of fresh-cut grass swaying us from the shadows

of apple trees, with

our scabbed knees and swollen hearts.

That was the trick.

The sunlight boiled and poured over our tanned backs—

maybe it was true we were destined to stock our lives

one against the other, comparing trunk space

and our children's faces, tax shelters and plumbers' bills,

the size of our porch swings and car dings

and
manly
things. I was once a bridge troll who sat in

hairy wait

for the marketplace sellers and farmers and troubadours,

all shouldering their pushcarts,

and the drunken city guard who danced with their daggers.

I bore your burden. I demanded my price and I was paid,

or my claws would catch their scornful sneers

and I'd take their ears.

I kept their contempt in a vase,

and their overbearing eyes

and sweetie-pie gazes in a wine barrel. And when

they brandished their golden chests and teeth,

I plucked each upon each within

their easy reach, and although I was the ugliest,

I was the best, and I never needed rest.

Show
 
me the photos of your babies once more,
 
delight

in your tiled kitchen, the in-ground heated pool, expound

upon the quiet of the filter, the thrill of the hot tub—glance

sidelong, with pity, at me one last time. My price

has increased. Bring me your carefree chatter and looks

of derision, tell me of each and every precious vaunted

well-planned decision, the power of your flesh,