Hades (imaginary)
for Isabella.
ALL LIVE TO DIE...
You told me once
that happiness was just another lie
my parents called a bedtime story.
looking at the sea,
Your hand against my
frail-boned shoulder,
You counted ships that passed our way
and breathed out pure melancholy,
the cigarette’s corrupting smoke,
that heaven’s hit of nicotine
Your bloodstream black as Styx already,
A malignant, jealous Hades,
reborn in the sting of the seafoam and salt,
in the autumn afternoon.
A Hades reborn in my child’s imagination,
You told me i was old enough
to learn the truth of Life.
Reader, please understand that i was eight.
You told me with a rasping breath
that happy endings
were for characters in fairy-tales
and that the world was cruel to you,
so changeling minds like mine
would never be allowed to bloom.
You told me stories filled with brimstone
so i’d grow up, the perfect lady; too bad for
You.
You knew i was barely eight years old.
and for once, fifteen now, full of rage,
it’s just my luck to be a fairy,
isn’t it, my dearest Hades imaginary?
i break a box of chocolates against the wreck
You called a house,
and find another twenty rosaries
- how much faith
and damn forgiveness did
You really want and need?
how many hymns and prayer books,
how many books of genesis bought until
You knew and realized
why your children fight and kill and bleed for
You?
i stole a piece of jewelry,
You know, from
Your bedside drawer:
the necklace from
Your wedding-
and i locked in a drawer out of guilt.
small gold chain, half of a heart
where’s the other half,
dear Hades imaginary?
in the growing pile of trash outside
among the clippings, psychic rags,
rotten divination books,
and magic healing crystal bags
we’ll burn tonight?
I look up
at another stack of bibles
and flip to pages I know well
- it’s always the same few -
why do we start tragedies?
Because each time
we start the song like it’ll end differently
We flip to pages hoping you didn’t really mean it that one time,
and find the same old dusty screaming ruins waiting where we thought for once we could just
breathe.
Half of a heart, broken in two-
Oh Hades Imaginary,
Forgiveness is a finite fucking thing.
...AND RISE TO FALL.
Later, when we start the bonfire in the garden,
rotten mildew, fake Edwardian chairs
sizzling at the frayed fabric,
Your makeshift memento pyre,
i untangle the chain from around my neck,
gently,
Gold that shyly glistens
to the flickerbeat flames:
the tentative rhythms
of the wooden changeling childrens’
shouts and games
that accompany the harmonies
of the crackling yellow pages
dying
for once and for all.
And i throw it in as well,
without any ceremony,
ni vu ni connu.
Your children continue to cheer
and throw wood onto the burning logs.
Dear Hades Imaginary,
Your heart
dissolves
and melts
and blazes
like it never did when you were living here.
half a heart,
like you, like me -
half a heart to care for ourselves,
only,
take what’s ours by given right;
Half a heart,
and half a mind to run
as far away as lungs permit,
out of here,
out of this crumbling
dusty memory,
out of reach of this
catastrophic
clusterfuck:
your claustrophobic legacy.
ARE YOU SURE THAT THEY’RE JUST GROWING PAINS?
remember:
you are just
sticks & stones.
and here I am,
refraction of perfection,
bones made of ash,
and heart made of glass.
Oh, mother, forgive me
if I know what you mean
when you say
we shouldn’t repeat the past.
Don’t walk too lightly, brother; you’ll wake the ghosts.
I was barely eight that day,
but I’m stronger than I ever was,
and you can’t hurt us ever again.
PERESTROIKA, ANGELS IN AMERICA.
Dear Hades Imaginary:
I built sandcastles
with my shaking fingers,
fashioned sandy walls
too high to see the clouds with
my own two snow-filled lungs,
walls that crumbled come sunset,
that the sea devoured with foamy jaws,
but that I built nonetheless.
Dear Hades Imaginary:
We have to try.
We have to try,
no matter how we know the story ends
when we stop reading.
We have to try,
and laugh,
and build stupid things,
machines
that have no purpose,
sandcastles
doomed to fail,
and say with
booming shaking lonely little voices
I Built This.
and
Dear Hades Imaginary,
YOU CAN NEVER TAKE IT AWAY!
And
I command my buzzing brain
with a tired child’s brittle, breaking,
unbalanced voice:
I must love this thing
I call myself
or at least... I’ll fucking die trying!
And the world starts turning.
Time starts now.
My life starts now.
A happy ending
now begins.
And
I breathe.
Dear Hades Imaginary,
I will love this thing
I call myself
If it costs me my
golden,
broken,
melted
heart.