Ah, I’m falling to pieces here.
I know I’m not Holden Caulfield. Or Jake Barnes or Jay Gatz.
I am not Kimball O’Hara or Rhoda or Bernard or Louis.
I am not Percival, or Phineas, or J. Alfred, or Franny Glass.
I’m not Max Fischer, or Igby Slocumb Jr., Zooey, or even Noah Kucoltinny.
I know that.
Yet, still I am.
But who am I?
(I am me.) He whispers from across the street.
and
Who is that?
(Guess we’ll have to wait and see)
Could be a baby being cradled and rocked to sleep by his loving, young mother;
Or maybe some withered and wrinkled old man in the corner, grey-haired and eyed,
already asleep and waiting to die..
Am I who I am right now?
Or am I stuck in between these lines,
waiting to fall, unsatisfied,
piece by forgotten piece…
each left in a photograph
crumpled up into a ball.
And you once asked me this question
and I would still answer,
Had I had a breath to spare,
or the nerve to call,
or a chance of living through this cancer
(or anything at all)
or if an atom floated home,
late one night alone,
while watching starry-eyed streets of Boston
reflect off the ancient ruins of Rome,
came upon a thought and said,
in orbit we are living and in orbit we are dead.
Is this what I’m saying or that what I said?
Who am I to say what I mean?
To die today would be a dream;
one from which it would be impossible to wake
and continue to suffer this eternal heartbreak.
Piece by piece,
I follow the west into the east.
I follow the never setting sun.
My bones, restless as they rotate,
each and every one,
each with such meaninglessness and decay.
Each time is the same time, each second, each week, each decade.
Each glowing away
(night by night, day by day).
As I breathe in order to breathe some more,
and as I beat my heart so that I can eat some more,
I wonder if it is worth it to skip ahead
when the end comes ready or not.
It can be depressing to be forgot.
Though which piece should I underscore,
if the end is impossible to ignore?
Whether I’m awake or falling asleep, making my bed or undressing,
I still can’t stop myself from thinking about tomorrow morning.
How is it even able to exist?
Does a clock count time or ticks of mist?
I wade into the sea with jacket pockets filled with stones and shotgun shells each emptied.
You fill your sails with emails and love letters,
and maybe someday we’ll meet.
I’ll pick you a flower
and together we’ll smile and say cheese.
Except how can love be just between you and me?
I count my steps to retrace
this distance from me to you,
and you and me to outer space.
(Four inches on a globe, when it’s not spinning.)
The air passes
(and fogs up my glasses, but that is just the beginning).
The air past us.
Everything passed in disgust.
Waiting for me at the end, thinking I was late
(it was the cosmos that we held and hold that made me so wait).
And my soul had wept a great deal.
But who am I to say what is real?
I imagine a world already spun.
A cloudy human heaven of my friends, each and every one--
each protecting their earth-bound gods and angels,
each praying to the sun.
I think, I think, I pause at the brink.
(I would sing to you, like I always do. If you wanted me to.)
But who am I to think?
I think of breathless peace and broken heart grease
hot-fired ashes and hard pinewood trees
the oceans endless, dark and deep
the blue-grey stars above and universal sleep.
. . . . . and you are so beautiful. I haven’t said that until now.
Just hold my hand.
Hold my hand, please.
That is all I want.
This is all I can offer.
That is all I need.
(now push repeat.)
Noah Kucoltinny, written november 2006
