Even Mr. Incredible does it

A Distinction

What is worth crying about?
Among the many things
or perhaps few things
if one were unscrupulous,
there are furious tears
boiled over a Self
shot blank
with wrongs
when it was caught
agape
at the poison
in the ointment.

Those are not the real thing,
however.
The genuine artifact
is from-the-bottom-of-the-well
weeping, out
of a giantess's sadness.
Perhaps something has died
and you're finally aware your own
name was in small print
on the epitaph. Or it was merely
lost or misplaced and so only
its hat and favorite robe lie
in the empty bed
beneath the serious stone.

This kind of outpouring
is the true public eulogy,
where the tears sting
a wintry face,
spruce and colourless
as an overcast hanky
streaked with salt.

When the sobs clear
and deep like whiskey glass
rend the caverns
of a diaphanous body
and edge the voice
to a screaming halt,
you think of nothing
but the sadness.
Even in past tense, it is
infinite and undrinkable
like the ocean.
What you kept
in your mouth
like a fiercely
secret word
has gone:
the train
has whistled past,
the anchor has been hoisted
onto the ancient white band
of the horizon and you're left
rolling downhill
with a hoary pipe
in your throat.

Why do you cry? Were you
ready for that passing,
burial of living tissue?
Was it time? Did Fate's black
seal leave a crack of light?
Is it possible to question
the undeniability of the present?

So the questions drop
pebbles into the mineshaft.
There is a draught
that blows right onto your fevered head.
Is this relief or sickness, you think
as you're seized once more
with the urge to expel.

And yet, the landscape flies
past and the two wheels
whipped by a slovenly chain
churn on, putting things
behind you.
Look,
there's that windy tunnel
where you let yourself go
too quickly.
That is
the familiar stone gate
that will enclose you
with the rest
of the large garden.
Those are
the black lanterns
that will liven shortly
and show you the way home.

By the time you reach them,
it will be forgiving,
anonymous night and you will
have finished it, that
torrential business. You will
feel a warm breeze
brush over your new
beautiful lungs
and laugh
because there is nothing
else to feel,
to do.

* * *
Another charming run of the spellcheck: they don't have "hanky", but they do have "honky". Oh, dear.

PS Some other great names: Grey Sample, Octavio Paz, Hans Hansen, and Magnus Magnussen, winner of a Strongest Man in the World contest in the late 90's.

PPS Decided not to go to S's birthday bash because there's too much reading and editing to do. Also, I was running late and she liked the cake--how's that for facile causality? I wiggle my hamster's tail in responsible literary critique's general direction!