-
© Alan Reade, 1999 and 2020
View the Show Notes
The Outskirts
So I'm in a tunnel of some sort,really dark.
And I have the sensation
that I'm floating through it.
And I see a light at the end of the tunnel,
and I think,
Okay...
this is it....
I'm really dead.
Well, not really.
I'm doing a "death exercise" at 18 years of age for the local AIDS project, where I volunteer as a caregiver, visualizing what it is to die so that I can help others do the same. This was before the days of protease inhibitors, when all we could do was help people die peacefully.
And, during this guided visualization, all I'm thinking is, Ahh...this light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel stuff--it's sort of a Dionne-Warwickified hallucination, isn't it? Maybe brought on by the constant but unwilling presence of the Psychic Friends' Network.
Maybe the way death should feel has crept into my unconscious and altered my death experience to be more Madison Avenue?
But watching death from the outside in is anything but Madison Avenue. There was the Easter I drove to a house on the outskirts of town to take over caring for a dying man whose parents hadn't slept in days. The tending. The soothing. The diapering. He was as thin as nails and his skin was translucent, a thin crepe covering his bones. He stayed in bed all the time. The entire house smelled like baby wipes.
And he kept calling me over the baby walkie-talkie placed next to his bed. All night long, he called me "Austin" because the last guy who'd helped his parents care for him was named that. That night, as I monitored him from the kitchen, he would moan "Austin...Austin..." over the intercom like a mantra until he fell asleep for a while. And then, like a baby, he would wake in a half-hour and start calling for me in louder cries.
He had been a ballet dancer once. Now he was unable to walk, laying in adult diapers day and night until death would come and take him. I wondered, Did he ever think he would die like this? In his early thirties? Out here on the outskirts, with his parents and strangers tending him day and night? And there was a huge plastic garbage can, industrial size, for all the dirty diapers. And sometimes I still get faint when I smell baby wipes because they remind me of impending death.
And the only thing that made it bearable
is that I could get in my Volkswagen
and drive away when it was all over.
Viral Landscape
I'm on a plane,Somewhere over Pennsylvania.
Speedboats in a lake below look like spermatozoa.
The green land beneath me looks pockmarked, tattered.If it were for sale,
I would call it "damaged goods."
Maybe man has gone too far.
If green is Earth's natural covering,
Are we simply a virus Earth could not eliminate...
Yet?
Are we Earth's HIV?
Maybe we're only a disease
Testing a living planet's immune system;
Maybe we're an experiment gone awry
By an indifferent god.
I'm on the route of transmission.
On the ground now, in a bus.
As I get farther into the country,
People outside wave to me
And are sucked away by
This moving road.
These beating wheels.
If I close my eyes,
I'm still flying.
Cities In My Head
All day cities in my head--Watching, watching vistas fade
And they disappear.
Maps never tell the story,Never tell "how," just "get there";
No, you came into my heart
Like those German books in school
That teach you how to say "This is a desk."
But you speak too softly, and I
Cannot hear cannot hear what you say
I only know part of the way
On paper--doesn't mean I talk to you.
Doesn't mean I come close to explaining
Your eyes' effects on me.
Words
Tell me less and less;
They're pasted, suppressed, held down down--
Flat on paper--a map I can read,
But can't reconcile
To this moving landscape
Slithering by me in cables and asphalt;
Surrounding me in trains and metal signs.
Where are you?
The cities in my head
Fade when you're gone,
But crumble when you're near;
I can write all I want,
But no map leads me there.
Moving landscapes
Disappear
Into nothing I know.
The map is not the place;
The cities and your face
Fade now.
I knew how to get there once,
When paper was real,
But now it tears and crumbles and yellows each day;
I only know part of the way.
Dalí Salad
One time, when I was in my early twenties, I took a Greyhound bus ride around the United States. Yeah, I just hopped on a bus in Seattle, where I lived at the time, and never really got off. Well, I got off occasionally, in places like San Diego, New York City...and Key West.Now, in Key West, I was totally broke, and I'd already called all my friends, who had Western-Unioned me as much money as they were ever going to send. And I was sleeping in a schoolyard after escorting two elderly British widows to Key Largo from the Miami airport. I had taught them how to talk like New Yorkers so they wouldn't get mugged. They had given me $20.00 as they got off the bus.
In two days, I'd spent what they'd given me on food and necessities, and I had nowhere to stay. I decided that the best way for me to make a living was to get a job in the food industry. I mean, it was October, the height of the tourist season in Key West. And I was sure restaurants would be fighting to hire me.
As it turned out, I was kind of right. After washing off at the beach, I walked into one place on Duvall Street and approached the head cook. His arms were as big around as I was--at the time.
He said, "So, can you make pancakes?"
"Of course," I said.
"You're hired!"
The next day, I started. But after that first day, I think they began to suspect that I had no idea what I was doing. I had told them I was a prep cook, which meant that I had a wealth of experience in preparing all kinds of food. That first day, a table of people ordered some oysters on the half-shell. I got out the little tool to pry open the shells. All I got were little oyster-shell shards flying all over the kitchen, ricocheting off the shiny chrome stoves and sinks.
"I thought you said you were a prep cook in Seattle!" said the big cook.
"Oh, well, I was," I lied. "We just didn't have oysters at the place I worked. Funny thing. Heh heh."
As the days wore on--I think there were three altogether--the owner of the restaurant began to suspect that I was totally out of my element. So he called for a meeting of all three prep cooks after the restaurant was closed. He stood us side by side in the kitchen and had us prepare a Caesar salad. Well, the cooks on either side of me started adding the right amounts of romaine lettuce, pieces of egg, chunks of chicken, and various what-nots to create beautiful and appealing salads.
Mine looked, more or less, like the Dalí version of their salads.
At this point, the owner turned his back, and five minutes later I was given my final pay in cash and a request never to return. However, by then, I had something even more valuable than money, more valuable than a job.
I had--food experience!
I quickly found a new job, rolling lumpia (Filipino eggrolls) and selling them in the hot October sun with icy drinks, while wearing a big straw sombrero.
Was this the same me? The one who grocery shopped and read the paper, back home in Seattle?
It seemed the road had transformed me into something new and adaptable.
A brand new creature.
Just Like Us
I was headed into new territory,Where no man had gone before.
I was an alien in my own country,
But everyone looked exactly the same.
And it reminded me of Star Trek--
The way that
No matter which planet they go to,
Everybody there looks exactly like a human being
With a lot of makeup on.
Now, considering the biodiversity of life on Earth,
From otters to panda bears to bacteria,
Isn't is amazing,
The idea that everywhere in the Universe we go,
People will look
Exactly like we do?
I work in a starship,
A huge white bus,
And everywhere we go,
They look just like us.
They all speak English,
They have the same passions;
The only things different
Seem to be the fashions.
We lock into orbit,
Much higher than they,
Then beam to the surface
To make things go our way.
And then we take off
With a light-speed thrust,
Watching on the monitors--
They're just like us.
3D white lines
On all sides of the bus;
Wherever we go,
They're just like us.
