XVI. First Ending

XVI. First Ending

It never occurred to me, in writing an autobiography, that it would be hard to figure out where to stop.  Obviously, a Gone With the Wind love triangle and like the one I've described could only go on  in a musical comedy, or perhaps an Eskimo village.  Yes, the drama does continue.  At the moment of this writing Tina has finally been able to end her sexual relationship with Dan Tucker (so she says anyway), and has made tentative inroads into the writing process to bring her book into existence; but it was not without much work, heartache, and finally meeting Dan Tucker face-to-face, watching him touch her, watching her look at him, watching her cry for him one more time.

     I wrote this poem while he was visiting us in Bear Creek:

I do not hate the way you look at him

I do not hate the way you look at him,

All smiles, all sympathy, glowing through the dense brown,

Any more than I would hate, say, a knife sticking in my arm,

or pancreatic cancer;

No, I bear you no grudge, your vast theft of my dream of bliss.

Your lips parted, breathing him in, do not suffocate me

like a plastic bag over a baby’s head,

or a tornado sucking the ether from the center 

of everything I ever saw drifting on the horizon 

of my hopes,

every article of meaning from the

once and future dictionary

of my self.

I stand on a cliff and do not see myself drowning below  

in the canyon’s turmoil, because I know those parted lips

can sing just as sweetly for me.

Who, I ask you, couldn’t unhear a splash of stone

  when democracy so thoroughly inspires 

our songs of praise and 

equality,

 Mickey Mouse still likes me, and

  St. George, dragonslayer deluxe,

Is lurking in the China room, battling evil with silver cutlery?

Who could doubt there is so much sun in the system that even the

backside of the moon is warm as toast,

and Hercules hefts our planetary obesity

 through outer space like a straw,

like a gnat,

like a solitary chromosome,

not diseased, not poison, not even scalding like a brand

or a sip of boiling oil? 

I do not ache, I do not bleed when his touch violates my holiest holy,

and my heart does not splinter into smaller and smaller shards with 

each caress;

No I am strong, I am whole, I am happy;

I do limp to my station at the door, 

or the cash register like an old used up dog, and 

watch the marrow seeping from my broken bone—No, no,

I am above the throng of rioting ghosts of my desires,

I am beyond “Hurt”, my friend, my confidant.

I have come to a pinnacle of acceptance and do not miss 

my one and only true thing,

any more than a snow man repents his melted eye.

I am a rock, I am a bastion, I see beyond that smile I absolutely, positively 

                                 Do Not Hate,

And I do not wish he would die a horrible agonizing death 

of leprosy or gangrene holding his 

rotting dick in his hands,

or be crushed to smithereens by a hurtling snowplow.

Although  I agreed to tolerate her affection for Dan Tucker, I really could not consider us married, and I could not wear her wedding ring, until she took the inevitable step of breaking up with him.  When she finally forced herself to do it, I wrote this poem:

I put my wedding ring back on today

I put my wedding ring back on today.

I didn’t need a priest.

My finger flinched a moment, as of something unfamiliar,

then slid on into the embrace.

I didn’t need a cop or a captain or a bartender to tell me

what I needed to hear; only

that scrape of gold,

cold for a moment on the unaccustomed skin,

then warm like a touch,

not of girl but of God.

My tears of joy wet the way, (as any sonneteer would say),

but weep I did, and smiling, too,

at this my heart’s final imprisonment;

for with this ring I thee wed, I thee claim, and claiming am claimed

to do the time, pay the fee

for whatever sliver of eternity our sentence be.

The riot of our distemper has quenched the deeper drought of

disaffection and despair; all doubts now excluded from the circlet

of choice--we, you and I, choose, and choosing free ourselves

to the slavery of each others’ arms.

O precious arms that knew me well, and forgot me, truly, in a dream,

in a weary figment of our mutual exhaustion, a tirade,

a plea, a fluke, a digression,

a sweet amnesia that for a moment forgot

our soul’s perfect succour,

and flayed me on a bed of spears.

How lost was I with no secret chain

my rampant genius to restrain!

How wholly without whisper of conviction or of hope

that angels flew and shepherds sang,

that no bright morning would ever be born again

out of the dissipation of love’s erotic dark.

I put my wedding ring back on today because 

my dear, dear wife has come home; and

a new incarnation of my soul has roused the stolid flesh,

(that was my misery, now my ecstacy), 

to transfigure the dross

into a blessed image of heaven’s bright promise--

a hymn of praise,

a prayer of thanksgiving.

Anyway, the main point of this whole Book Two, the point of the title, The Third Flight of the Phoenix, was to show how a pathetic victim of Asperger’s Syndrome finally managed to deal with some of the most destructive symptoms of that syndrome, symptoms that nearly lost him his wife and his life, and pull it all back together. Through it all there was a supreme effort not only to change dysfunctional behaviors, but to find a person behind the artificial surfaces of sequential thinking and artistic pretense.  Twenty-five years ago, Tina needed an artist; there I was. Today she needs a man, and that, through much toil and strain, redefinition, and spiritual insight, I have become. 

If  I could but draw your approving glance

If  I could but draw your approving glance to me

with a well-turned phrase, or a rhyme,

How I would study and slave over what I cannot say and will never say!

But, ah, the music of the wind and sky unman me, 

and I  falter at the crisis,

submit to the stained and dusty smell of old books,

the mother and  grave maker of all my tunes,

and fail again

to  sing you to my arms.

I want to say, no,

I want to say, no

I want to imprint on your mind such syllables of soul

That might enchant and charm you to me (poo-tee-wheet);

but a flurry of feathers excites just so much (and no more)

breath of breeze as it takes to say, “I have nothing to give.”

“Nothing” is all my art, “Nothing” is my puerile deal with the devil,

who gives me ribaldries for sonnets, and pigs for pearls.

How can I entice the golden bird (poo-tee-wheet) 

to the wasteland of my arid self? By dressing a cactus in tinsel?

By harmonizing the groan of cottonwoods into comic chorales ?

I spit on my words, my poses, my consumptive knick-knacks of song,

so unmade are they by rough hands on a chain saw!

I will arise and go now, and build my hut on the hill,

and silent will I sit, and silent sing, and pray for you to come to me

on crest of flood, or in an old chevy pick-up.