When Death Wakes Us...

We type #thestruggle as a joke and follow twitter members named "First World Problems," so I assume we understand the absurdity of our culture's tendency to chronically complain. We are all guilty--some more than others--of turning a minor problem into a tragedy. We focus on which clothes to wear, which phones to buy, and which of our things we can flaunt in certain circles. The reality is, this stuff doesn't matter. At all. And though this is an oft explored idea, life always has vacancy for a little wake up call.

My cousin is a police officer and sees things that never reach the papers. To be an outsider looking in on someone else's pain is bad enough, but to carry the responsibility of "calming them down" so you can ask them objective, emotionless questions is a burden I wish not to endure. He described to me a recent call, which he called the "saddest thing [he's] ever seen," and which inspired this poem. The event caused us both to think about the minute things that consumed our attention that day--including what we were wearing. It led us to conclude that a tragic amount of people drift away from reality into a society-induced sleep that steals them from what is truly important. Sadly, sometimes death can be the only thing to wake them...


A Policeman's Paltry Wardrobe, Justified

My medley of clothes, complete

with blues to exploit my eyes

and reds and yellows and matching ties

for each point-collared shirt, dangles above brown feet

 

and black-toed leather with wooden soles,

worn from dancing when I wore them to dance

with the pinstriped pleated pants

now pinned to the plastic, ready for banquets or weddings or any of their roles;

 

Indeed I can

assemble such wonder,
a wardrobe of garments set asunder

from counterparts, fit for any moment for any man

who dares to invest such care

in appearance, who thinks patterns

and linens would matter

if I happened to trip and fall dead to the bottom of the stair

like this woman, found by her daughter

in this crimson sweater of wool,

which matches the blood rippling from her skull

onto the concrete that caught her;

this blue smile, unaltered by gargling screams

that grapple with the chilling warmth in her cheeks,

which wrestles with the exhaling breath that seeks

to wake her from infinite dreams—

O revive the eight men and me, black-suited,

who circle a throttled body, contorted

yet dressed for this moment mistakably thwarted

by phantom chance, while true purpose ascends from her grave, uprooted

by the thought of my closet, aligned

for show and supposed events,

this collage of color meant to represent

a life which, if defined by this, is undefined,

and so I waive the right to repurpose

these things drooping from steel like wilted dreams

or like the limbs of a mother, death seeping from her seams,

bludgeoning me with a cost I conclude isn’t worth it.