I am afraid
I fear death not dying
And though I do not relish pain
And while the painful passing I shrug off
The thought of being dead fills me with dread
A hangover I must believe
Of the fact that from the time I started school
Or a little afterward
Death would mean eternal suffering
Unavoidable fact of universal justice
In a world of flesh-consuming-never-consumed fire
Apparently created for me alone
Since others found solace here and there
In the ordinary conventional formulations
And try as I mightily did
I proved incapable again and again and again and again and again
But
Most of the time
Until the turn occurring well after the first blush
Of young adulthood
I was a happy-go-lucky charmer
I remember from my childhood
Occasional remarks from older people
As to the brightness of my eyes
And the persistence of my smile
And I remember pervasive contentment
Alone with record player, toys, and books
And together with my school chums
When I was five and six and seven
My birthday coinciding with the start of the school year
And in the first grade I was in The King and I
And Sister Nathaniel allowed me to come to school late
For rehearsals went far into the evening
And she let me stand in the front of class
To lead the children in singing
And on one such occasion I pulled my shirt up
And Sister Nathaniel sent me in disgrace to my desk
Said I was no gentleman and King and I
Pooh
When I was turning eight we moved to Winter Haven
And I prayed to return to Alabama
The mantra of a thousand pleases
Each repeated instance of please I desperately hoped
Would increase the chance that my prayer would be answered
Which it never was despite the fervor of my plea
And the vast accumulation of polite formula
And after Christmas in a weird interlude when for some months
For reasons of finance and employment
Beyond my childish ken
My father lived in Washington DC
While my mother and my siblings and I
Lived in the ancestral town
Amid innumerable aunts uncles and cousins
None of whom I got a chance know or care for
I had no chum
And the teachers in Florida
Had more than Sister Nathaniel’s sternness
And none of her indulgence
And I came to understand
That socially I was no gentleman
And morally I was no saint
And only saints go to heaven
I was a bad and disobedient boy
I had taken my First Holy Communion
And thus made my first confession
The preceding year
And confession and communion throughout the weeks
And said the words of the Act of Contrition daily
And I knew that my confessions were null and void
And absolution unattainable
Since I was incapable of examining my conscience
And I knew that my act of contrition was a lie
Oh my God I am heartily sorry
For having offended thee
And I detest all my sins
Because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell
But
Most of all because they offend thee my God
Who art all good and deserving of all my love
Well my dreading the pains of hell
That much was true
And I supposed even then
That losing heaven would suck
Heaven an immaterial abstraction
My voice soaring on the thee
And soaring with the crowning falsehood of most of all
For in truth I feared the palpable reality of hell
And the offense to God was merely and trivially theoretical
And I wanted to detest my sins
But in my busy fear I could never do so
Certainly while I was sinning
I was enjoying myself
The detestation and the regret for the offense
Could only come later upon reflection
Upon examination of the conscience
But
Of today’s sins I had only the vaguest recollection
And no recollection at all of the sins of yesterday
Or the day before that or the day before that
And so I fictionalized while waiting in line
And lied in the very confessional
And I have been an anxious person
For I fear punishment
From my sometimes-wrathful father
From my duly authorized employer
From the pot-sniffing police
From my wife and kids
From my nearest and dearest
From the objects of contempt and resentment
I fear death
For death is a punishment
Notwithstanding the merciful quazi-hellish torment
Of centuries albeit temporary in purgatory
And my reasoning brain can occasionally forget
The psychotic nightmare of eternal agony
Made worse by the unattainable promise
Of eternal bliss
Hence in part my frequent recourse
As soon as I was able
To the lawn mowers upon the cortex
And it offers cold comfort
To try to imagine the unimaginable
A universe of inexistence
But
My fear not of annihilation
But of nihility
Has never forestalled my harmful habit
Of suicidal ideation
Destruction less fearsome
Than having-been-destroyed
And I tell the truth in these pages
But not the whole truth thanky vous
So my vows purposes and promises even now are void
And I fail to evade the sickly confessional mode
And following that weird school year
In Winter Haven and Stuart
We spent the summer house-sitting
When my father’s friend and temporary boss
Had in the garage a classic car
That needed periodic starting
In the basement rec room a dehumidifier
That needed periodic emptying
And in that same rec room
The children’s record player
For in that summer cartoon characters
Had taken to releasing records
Pixie and Dixie diddle-dee dum
Are the best of friends
Did little-lee lum for me
Much more engaging
Professor Ludwig von Drake’s
Uptempo waltz
With its brisk Teutonic monologue
I’m a genius in psychology
Plane geometry and anthropology
I’m the living end of entomology
And at bridge I excel
I know all about atomic energy
[something something something] biochemistry
But when it comes to brain surgery
That I only do swell
And I particularly enjoyed that one
Since I was proud to know
That my father was in fact a biochemist
And my mother not yet certified as a medical technologist
Sent little brother and me
To the summer program
At the elementary school down the block
Where we constructed objets
Out of popsicle sticks
And came home
Or what we called home that summer
For a lunch of Campbell’s soup
But
One day we did not come straight home
For two older boys invited us
To see the secret fortress they had built
And so we walked past the baseball diamond
Some good little distance
I remember stepping in dog shit
To see the truly rather impressive achievement
Of trenches and barricades
And even a tunnel or two
Pioneered into a steep bank
Above the two-lane drag
And we were there for a long time
Occupied I don’t remember how
When I heard my father yelling GregorEE
Little brother hurried to greet him
While the pioneers hissed no
And I tried to hold him back
Lest we betray the secret of the fortress
But the expression on my father’s face
A turmoil that passed understanding
And only years later did it occur to me
That for a long time that afternoon
He had lost his two youngest
I don’t remember what happened next
But I think I was sent to my room
And I remember fantasizing
Or perhaps dreaming in semi-wakefulness
That I would be hanged the next morning
From the landscaping timbers
In the backyard
And I felt no fear
But
Only a profound sadness
That such a reprobate
Should have so short a life
And I forgot to remember hell
But
Now the first glimmering of the thought
That whither I go is hell
Myself am hell
A wrongdoer at age eight
Condemned predestined
No alternative but to do wrong
Without thought
Without intention
But
I will herewith disclose the occasional rare
Indulgence in homicidal ideation
Additional to the suicidal flavor
But
I will again protest
That I do not lack entirely some resources
Of self-control of disciplinary rigor
And that through my own efforts
The incidence of the unbidden imagery
Of killing self or other
Has notably diminished recent years
Though it has flared up in recent weeks
I aspire to personhood
And a person a being capable of reason
Respects appreciates celebrates and applauds
Personhood
And I will do no harm to any person
Least of all one whom I love as much as myself
And my death however it comes will cause sorrow
To my many friends and to my beloved