Thwarted by a Line of Diatomaceous Earth

I.

1989, I snuck into the shuttered
Ruin of the Granada Theater.
Built in 1926 for the Marx Brothers,
It now sat lovely, dark,
Decaying and vulnerable.
It was February, frigid and still,
The smell of exhaust frozen in mid-air.
Looking down into the crumbling
Orchestra pit, all I saw was an
Expanse of flat, icy concrete.
I leapt, and the eight feet of black,
Oily water beneath the ice welcomed me
Into its swift and jarring embrace. Of
The brief second that the water closed
Over my head before I clambered out,
I can recall only colors:
My skull ringing like a clapper struck bell:
Cracked and
Wonderful and wholly inimitable.

II.

My friend Lori was an artful junkie.
When she wasn’t traveling, she slept
In a pile of discarded clothes
Behind the graffitied door to my room.
One evening, as the cicada’s waxing
Drone drifted from the lazy trees,
She returned to me from New Orleans
Hunched and sallow and exhausted. We
Sat with flat keg beer in red solo cups,
Her bruised knees peeked through
Gaping holes in black stockings.
We spoke of nothing and less. She seemed
Distant and preoccupied. I pressed, and
She confessed to me that she had done
Something Awful. While in New Orleans
Her and another friend–Jake–had
Broken into Odd Fellows Rest, and
Desecrated the grave of an infant,
Making off with its tiny skull and a
Number of miscellaneous bones. Her
Guilt was palpable, overwhelming, and
She had disposed of the bones in Lake
Michigan just the night before. Now, she
Told me, a darkness followed at the
Corners of her eyes. She would fix,
And the smell returned to her,
Cloying, rotted silk, wormwood, the
Earthy lungful of decay. She felt haunted
And alone. That night she slept in
The pile of clothes behind my door,
But was gone before I woke to dust
Motes drifting in the slanted sun.
They found her stiff, cold, lying
On her side on a friend’s couch the
Next week. Overdose, of course, and
Although people were vaguely sad,
Or perhaps slightly outraged, no one,
Including me, was incredibly surprised.

III.

I jumped, and then crawled. The light
Came and the light went. I crawled and
Then I jumped. I followed the warmth.
I would be warm, and then I would eat.
I came upon a vast graveyard, the
Calcified shells of ancient sea-beasts,
Whorls and windows and glassine spikes,
A grit and skeleton city passed to the
Horizon, a maze of bones delineated by
The geometry of a willful passing.
I jumped from shell to shell. The dust
Of their remains coated my carapace,
Drying me, burning me, their ghosts and
Their songs rising like a slow whistle
In the hollows of the empty vessels.
I would not stop.
I would not die.
I crawled. I jumped. The Light came and
The Light went. I jumped. I jumped.