Life on Mars Read online

  Hides something elemental. Not God, exactly. More like

  Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being—a Starman

  Or cosmic ace hovering, swaying, aching to make us see.

  And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure

  That someone was there squinting through the dust,

  Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only

  To be wanted back badly enough? Would you go then,

  Even for a few nights, into that other life where you

  And that first she loved, blind to the future once, and happy?

  Would I put on my coat and return to the kitchen where my

  Mother and father sit waiting, dinner keeping warm on the stove?

  Bowie will never die. Nothing will come for him in his sleep

  Or charging through his veins. And he’ll never grow old,

  Just like the woman you lost, who will always be dark-haired

  And flush-faced, running toward an electronic screen

  That clocks the minutes, the miles left to go. Just like the life

  In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky

  Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands

  Even if it burns.

  2.

  He leaves no tracks. Slips past, quick as a cat. That’s Bowie

  For you: the Pope of Pop, coy as Christ. Like a play

  Within a play, he’s trademarked twice. The hours

  Plink past like water from a window A/C. We sweat it out,

  Teach ourselves to wait. Silently, lazily, collapse happens.

  But not for Bowie. He cocks his head, grins that wicked grin.

  Time never stops, but does it end? And how many lives

  Before take-off, before we find ourselves

  Beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?

  The future isn’t what it used to be. Even Bowie thirsts

  For something good and cold. Jets blink across the sky

  Like migratory souls.

  3.

  Bowie is among us. Right here

  In New York City. In a baseball cap

  And expensive jeans. Ducking into

  A deli. Flashing all those teeth

  At the doorman on his way back up.

  Or he’s hailing a taxi on Lafayette

  As the sky clouds over at dusk.

  He’s in no rush. Doesn’t feel

  The way you’d think he feels.

  Doesn’t strut or gloat. Tells jokes.

  I’ve lived here all these years

  And never seen him. Like not knowing

  A comet from a shooting star.

  But I’ll bet he burns bright,

  Dragging a tail of white-hot matter

  The way some of us track tissue

  Back from the toilet stall. He’s got

  The whole world under his foot,

  And we are small alongside,

  Though there are occasions

  When a man his size can meet

  Your eyes for just a blip of time

  And send a thought like SHINE

  SHINE SHINE SHINE SHINE

  Straight to your mind. Bowie,

  I want to believe you. Want to feel

  Your will like the wind before rain.

  The kind everything simply obeys,

  Swept up in that hypnotic dance

  As if something with the power to do so

  Had looked its way and said:

  Go ahead.

  SAVIOR MACHINE

  I spent two years not looking

  Into the mirror in his office.

  Talking, instead, into my hands

  Or a pillow in my lap. Glancing up

  Occasionally to let out a laugh.

  Gradually it felt like a date with a friend,

  Which meant it was time to end.

  Two years later, I saw him walking

  Up Jay Street into the sun. No jacket,

  His face a little chapped from wind.

  He looked like an ordinary man carrying

  Shirts home from the laundry, smiling

  About something his daughter had said

  Earlier that morning. Back before

  You existed to me, you were a theory.

  Now I know everything: the words you hate.

  Where you itch at night. In our hallway,

  There are five photos of your dead wife.

  This is what we mean by sharing a life. Still,

  From time to time, I think of him watching me

  From over the top of his glasses, or eating candy

  From a jar. I remember thanking him each time

  The session was done. But mostly what I see

  Is a human hand reaching down to lift

  A pebble from my tongue.

  THE SOUL

  The voice is clean. Has heft. Like stones

  Dropped in still water, or tossed

  One after the other at a low wall.

  Chipping away at what pushes back.

  Not always making a dent, but keeping at it.

  And the silence around it is a door

  Punched through with light. A garment

  That attests to breasts, the privacy

  Between thighs. The body is what we lean toward,

  Tensing as it darts, dancing away.

  But it’s the voice that enters us. Even

  Saying nothing. Even saying nothing

  Over and over absently to itself.

  THE UNIVERSE: ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK

  The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even

  A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.

  Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane

  Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise,

  Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings

  In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored

  Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire

  And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen:

  The dark we’ve only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,

  Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns.

  Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears

  Disappears as if returning somewhere.

  TWO

  THE SPEED OF BELIEF

  In memoriam, Floyd William Smith 1935–2008

  I didn’t want to wait on my knees

  In a room made quiet by waiting.

  A room where we’d listen for the rise

  Of breath, the burble in his throat.

  I didn’t want the orchids or the trays

  Of food meant to fortify that silence,

  Or to pray for him to stay or to go then

  Finally toward that ecstatic light.

  I didn’t want to believe

  What we believe in those rooms:

  That we are blessed, letting go,

  Letting someone, anyone,

  Drag open the drapes and heave us

  Back into our blinding, bright lives.

  When your own sweet father died

  You woke before first light

  And ate half a plate of eggs and grits,

  And drank a glass of milk.

  After you’d left, I sat in your place

  And finished the toast bits with jam

  And the cold eggs, the thick bacon

  Flanged in fat, savoring the taste.

  Then I slept, too young to know how narrow

  And grave the road before you seemed—

  All the houses zipped tight, the night’s

  Few clouds muddy as cold coffee.

  You stayed gone a week, and who were we

  Without your clean profile nicking away

  At anything that made us afraid?

  One neighbor sent a cake. We ate<
br />
  The baked chickens, the honeyed hams.

  We bowed our heads and prayed

  You’d come back safe,

  Knowing you would.

  What does the storm set free? Spirits stripped of flesh on their slow walk.

  The poor in cities learn: when there is no place to lie down, walk.

  At night, the streets are minefields. Only sirens drown out the cries.

  If you’re being followed, hang on to yourself and run—no—walk.

  I wandered through evenings of lit windows, laughter inside walls.

  The sole steps amid streetlamps, errant stars. Nothing else below walked.

  When we believed in the underworld, we buried fortunes for our dead.

  Low country of dogs and servants, where ghosts in gold-stitched robes walk.

  Old loves turn up in dreams, still livid at every slight. Show them out.

  This bed is full. Our limbs tangle in sleep, but our shadows walk.

  Perhaps one day it will be enough to live a few seasons and return to ash.

  No children to carry our names. No grief. Life will be a brief, hollow walk.

  My father won’t lie still, though his legs are buried in trousers and socks.

  But where does all he knew—and all he must now know—walk?

  Probably he spun out of himself

  And landed squarely in that there, his new

  Body capable, lean, vibrating at the speed

  Of belief. She was probably waiting

  In the light everyone describes,

  Gesturing for him to come. Surely they

  Spent the whole first day together, walking

  Past the city and out into the orchards

  Where perfect figs and plums ripen

  Without fear. They told us not to go

  Tipping tables looking for them. Not even

  To visit their bodies in the ground. They are

  Sometimes maybe what calls out

  To people stuck in some impossible hell.

  The ones who later recall, “I heard a voice

  Saying Go and finally, as if by magic, I was able

  Simply to go.”

  What happens when the body goes slack?

  When what anchors us just drifts off toward….

  What that is ours will remain intact?

  When I was young, my father was lord

  Of a small kingdom: a wife, a garden,

  Kids for whom his word was Word.

  It took years for my view to harden,

  To shrink him to human size

  And realize the door leading out was open.

  I walked through, and my eyes

  Swallowed everything, no matter

  How it cut. To bleed was my prize:

  I was free, nobody’s daughter,

  Perfecting an easy weightless laughter.

  Of all the original tribes, the Javan has walked into the dappled green light.

  Also the Bali, flicking his tail as the last clouds in the world dissolved at his back.

  And the Caspian, with his famous winter mane, has lain down finally for good.

  Or so we believe. And so I imagine you must be even more alone now,

  The only heat of your kind for miles. A solitary country. At dawn, you listen

  Past the birds rutting the trees, past even the fish at their mischief. You listen

  The way a woman listens to the apparatus of her body. And it reaches you,

  My own wish, like a scent, a rag on the wind. It’ll do no good to coax you back

  From that heaven of leaves, of cool earth and nothing to fear. How far.

  How lush your bed. How heavy your prey. Day arrives. You gorge, sleep,

  Wade the stream. Night kneels at your feet like a gypsy glistening with jewels.

  You raise your head and the great mouth yawns. You swallow the light.

  You stepped out of the body.

  Unzipped it like a coat.

  And will it drag you back

  As flesh, voice, scent?

  What heat burns without touch,

  And what does it become?

  What are they that move

  Through these rooms without even

  The encumbrance of shadows?

  If you are one of them, I praise

  The god of all gods, who is

  Nothing and nowhere, a law,

  Immutable proof. And if you are bound

  By habit or will to be one of us

  Again, I pray you are what waits

  To break back into the world

  Through me.

  IT’S NOT

  for Jean

  That death was thinking of you or me

  Or our family, or the woman

  Our father would abandon when he died.

  Death was thinking what it owed him:

  His ride beyond the body, its garments,

  Beyond the taxes that swarm each year,

  The car and its fuel injection, the fruit trees

  Heavy in his garden. Death led him past

  The aisles of tools, the freezer lined with meat,

  The television saying over and over Seek

  And ye shall find. So why do we insist

  He has vanished, that death ran off with our

  Everything worth having? Why not that he was

  Swimming only through this life—his slow,

  Graceful crawl, shoulders rippling,

  Legs slicing away at the waves, gliding

  Further into what life itself denies?

  He is only gone so far as we can tell. Though

  When I try, I see the white cloud of his hair

  In the distance like an eternity.

  THREE

  LIFE ON MARS

  1.

  Tina says what if dark matter is like the space between people

  When what holds them together isn’t exactly love, and I think

  That sounds right—how strong the pull can be, as if something

  That knows better won’t let you drift apart so easily, and how

  Small and heavy you feel, stuck there spinning in place.

  Anita feels it now as a tug toward the phone, though she knows

  The ear at the other end isn’t there anymore. She’ll beat her head

  Against the rungs of her room till it splits, and the static that seeps out

  Will lull her to sleep, where she’ll dream of him walking just ahead

  Beside a woman whose mouth spills O after O of operatic laughter.

  But Tina isn’t talking about men and women, what starts in our bodies

  And then pushes out toward anywhere once the joy of it disappears.

  She means families. How two sisters, say, can stop knowing one another,

  Stop hearing the same language, scalding themselves on something

  Every time they try to touch. What lives beside us passing for air?

  2.

  Last year, there was a father in the news who kept his daughter

  Locked in a cell for decades. She lived right under his feet,

  Cooking food, watching TV. The same pipes threading through his life

  Led in and out of hers. Every year the footsteps downstairs multiplied.

  Babies wailing through the night. Kids screaming to be let outside.

  Every day, the man crept down into that room, bringing food,

  Lying down with the daughter, who had no choice. Like a god

  Moving through a world where every face looked furtively into his,

  Then turned away. They cursed him to his back. He didn’t hear.

  They begged him for air, and all he saw were bodies on their knees.

  How close that room. What heat. And his wife upstairs, hearing

  Their clamor underfoot, thinking the house must just be

  Settling into itself with age.

  3.

  Tina says dark matter is just a theory. Something

  We know is there, but can’t com
pletely prove.

  We move through it, bound, sensing it snatch up

  What we mean to say and turn it over in its hands

  Like glass sifted from the sea. It walks the shore,

  Watching that refracted light dance back and forth

  Before tossing whatever it was back to the surf.

  4.

  How else could we get things so wrong,

  Like a story hacked to bits and told in reverse?—

  5.

  He grabbed my blouse at the neck.

  All I thought was This is my very best

  And he will ruin it. Wind, dirt, his hands

  Hard on me. I heard the others

  Jostling to watch as they waited

  For their turns.

  They were not glad to do it,

  But they were eager.

  They all wanted to, and fought

  About who would go first.

  We went to the cart

  Where others sat waiting.

  They laughed and it sounded

  Like the black clouds that explode

  Over the desert at night.

  I knew which direction to go

  From the stench of what still burned.

  It was funny to see my house

  Like that—as if the roof

  Had been lifted up and carried off

  By someone playing at dolls.

  6.

  Who understands the world, and when

  Will he make it make sense? Or she?

  Maybe there is a pair of them, and they sit

  Watching the cream disperse into their coffee

  Like the A-bomb. This equals that, one says,

  Arranging a swarm of coordinates

  On a giant grid. They exchange smiles.

  It’s so simple, they’ll be done by lunchtime,

  Will have the whole afternoon to spend naming

  The spaces between spaces, which their eyes

  Have been trained to distinguish. Nothing

  Eludes them. And when the nothing that is

  Something creeps toward them, wanting

  To be felt, they feel it. Then they jot down

  Equation after equation, smiling to one another,

  Lips sealed tight.