cover artwork 2009 Carl W. Scarbrough.

Book Excerpt

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Some Response

At last I cleaned up the great lottery stubs of you – all of them losses.
You and every past or passing thing, even this day, I bundled the all of it together
and tied it into deliberate logs like so much kindling,
eager for the strike.
The only reasonable thing to do was strike a match.

So I did.

No ghosts or prophecies arose from the smoke.
All those symbols and signs: they never did mean a thing.
Yes, this is a time of chaos, but as I've so often said,
Chaos is but an illusion: use your reason.
Integers repeating so predictably. Life's little travesties –
again and again and again.

You – you tiptoe the cracks of the pavement.
Skirt the edge; skim the surface, (all the euphemisms that fit).
But I, I am done. I'm checking out.
Sympathy and souvenirs tucked between the pages of books.

Treasured volumes inscribed with empty words,
"love" and
"remember", and so forth.

There is something so very wrong with such sentimentality –
A sloppy, vivid dream.
Yes, sure, I leafed through the all of it –
And it was all so very pretty: history honeyed and sweet.
And I! There on the bookshelf, framed and smiling,
skin flush: cheekbones luminous and lit.
Why I look ripe as an apricot!

I found a great bucket and filled it with water.
Threw the full of it on the all, and the years blurred together –
a watercolor hemorrhaging – shrugging off its veneer.
Beneath my giant umbrella, I jumped and I splashed in the muddy puddles of my past.
I whooped. I danced.
In one graceful, arc I leapt the length of it – a perfect ballet privé –
No one to bear witness, but I knew. I knew.

My dark mood is wooing me to no particular end.
It is a nocturne without intent – it has no want.
It is Because and that is Why.

What of belief now? You tell me,
"Grief teaches one to divest."

There is a certainty in the solitary.
The only sure things are the simplest.
The telephone will ring – the calls will go unanswered.
The full-moon's rabbit will still be visible from everywhere
–even from where I am not.

Leaves will fall each autumn.
Yes, collect them if you must, but do not ascribe any meaning.
It means only this: summer has ended – things die.
Cold is a certainty. You'll know it soon enough.
You'll feel it in your bones.
Last night, I read a poem that chilled me to the quick.
The last stanza's final line,

New love sacrificed on the altar of an antique marriage.

I almost laughed, but not quite, for it was not at all funny.
Yes, sacrifice your new love, I thought, but why would anyone make such a choice?
Why even I am not fool enough to make mockery of the pure and true: other half you.

The poet turned his once-in-a-lifetime so easily into agnus dei

A maiden sacrificial; a lamb to appease this Other, waiting so eagerly in the dark.
It was not Love itself he was sacrificing, but his suspected lover –
(such a dirty, dirty word).
The whole poem had the rank stench of the faithless: this, and the
sound of settling.
If I had absolution, holy host, I would not feed it to this poet.
I would snap the wafer in two. Leave it in bits on some unmarked,
unholy path.

It wouldn't change a damn thing: the heavens would not part.
Everything last has thing has already been torn into ragged twos
–such unnecessary fissures.
See how they bleed and bleed and bleed and god the ache...

Why I have been sucked dry by experience.
I will play my violin solo.
I will be the thought that does not occur.
No longer shall I evaluate or calculate.

I will not do the math nor sort out the variables.
To hell with the equation.
There is freedom in lack of expectation.
And I was so very sure!

There is no message or subtext. I will not learn from this.
I have nothing earth shattering or profound to say.
We're all just saving face anyway. Yes, yes, I understand...
I once thought ... nevermind.

There is, never was, anything original here.
Some people take what life offers instead of offering themselves to life.
It is a bell you ring or do not ring.
Me, I pull hard the rope –
Swing until the clapper licks the bell's bronzed sides.
Listen: do you hear?
Perhaps this means nothing.
But I am trying.
I have smashed my nest to bits.
I am choking on absurdities.
Odd how life shifts in one instant and you are blindsided.
Yes, I care, you care, she cares, they care, we all care...
So what.
There's nothing to be done about it now.
Shoulda woulda coulda.

I've grazed my elbows, ankles, knees – my heart.
Please!
Stop the Song of Songs and take away the other stanzas!
They're all the same.

I am diving deep now.
I am withholding my sighs.

Come spring I will walk alone.
Perhaps I will hopscotch through Brooklyn.
Maybe skip beneath the cool shade of linden trees at Prospect.
I will be utterly impetuous.
I will run fast. I will hide.
I will be found, but only when I want.
I shall make my just choices.

Copyright © 2009. Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti. Re-printed by permission of the author.

You Read It Here First

Privet near-far far-near truth inexorable.
The direction returns each year –
a necessary certainty: will you have any?
The space that surrounds you: waxing scent, a sigh in the air.
It cannot help that it is green – this is just the situation.
We can dance to it! The trees will not chide us.
Nothing mediocre here: exceptional really.
June's clever clover-chains – they'll just have to do –
No daisies today.

I will string them together, a long garland. Perhaps I'll wear it.
Yes, the libidinous frightens, even if the instinct is pure.
It is no difierent from the ripening of fruit on the tree,
or the silent blossoming of flowers.
I want to make-out in the park.
Unusual for me – but I think I'll be alright.

I imagine leaving refreshed – briskly alive –
perhaps a bit
disheveled.

Bathed in dappled shade commonality reverberates.
This is innocence to me.
Yes, the years could reverse to nothing in particular.
But this is so precise and exacting.
I like how it tastes: like apricot jam or orange-blossom honey.
I want to dip my finger in. I want to lick my lips.
I am dying for a taste.

I am replying to the spring.
Not anything I anticipated. Can't I just wear this for a while?
It leaves me trembling.
I had to tell you about it anyway...
At least before I quit, before I drift,
and the future closes in and I am lost to it forever.
Right now, I have no hesitation, perhaps some caution.
How I love the scent of privet: I could fall in love.
You read it here first.

Copyright © 2009. Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti. Re-printed by permission of the author.

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