“The Illusions That Make Life Bearable”

John Giorno and my mind, in the same room

Every April, Miami celebrates Poetry Month by hosting an array of events to incite the masses to explore poetry, a noble, confused cause, if you ask me.

On a warm afternoon last April, I decided to give the O,Miami initiative a shot. My head was elsewhere, it needed to come back from that other place, and I figured poetry, implictly someone else’s, would perhaps siren call me, back from elsewhere.

I took a seat in the back, whether to watch the room in its entirety or to minimize who watches me. I sat in the back for the same reason I always sit in the back, whether in classrooms, loves, and buses: it’s close to the exit.

The crowd was a confused marriage between the non-palatable artsy-fartsy types and the careful, beer-drinking, wounded birds — my people. I call them so because their eyes hover over ideas far longer than their minds, you can tell because they blink slowly, they require more time, and their souls feel antagonized often and long after the roomful of chairs and chalices expires.

Then John Giorno, a seventy-something Beat Generation poet, close friend to Ginsberg before “Howl” and Warhol after Monroe’s four-way prism, took to the tiny stage.

He began without context or looming self-doubt:

I began without context or looming self-doubt.

It doesn’t get any better than this

This made me laugh at first, and then it hit me.

Life: a Grand Dame at the cusp of retirement, every second, a murmur of elasticity that coils back to what is, not what if; a mind without theory, if you can imagine that; above it all, a constant rapture… and it doesn’t get better than “this”, better than what John? Better than now? I disagree.

Because “now” is not guaranteed, many think it’s worth shaping into the best form of existence, the only kind. Yet I can think of many moments that are better, specially because they’re not happening ‘now’, or ever again.

The night I fell in love for the first time.

The night I fell in love for the second time.

February 18th, 2002.

I could not save you

I began ranting:

I tried being the path to get you anywhere, take you anywhere. I loved you so much, my dear lover, that I became your mother. I loved you so much I fought for you with you and against you. I left you resting in a sea of comforts. I came back everyday, squalid, offering alternatives to your breakage. I lost my mind for you. I went there, did that, for you, and I could not save you.

My lips quivered, from this moment forward, until the end of the poem.

The illusions that make bearable

1. That love is the answer to everything.
2. That everything has an answer.
3. That everything needs an answer.
4. That we must find it.
5. That we can’t find it.

When you lose, the illusion, that makes life bearable

Anything is possible. Light to dark and back again.

It will happen, very soon, I will Remember Nothing

So true. I don’t remember what I had for breakfast three days ago.

I only remember what my mind finds memorable, and it’s not up for debate. A dozen moments, three of them already mentioned, and the rest is just white noise.

I take solace in this thought… most of what happens to me will leave no mark. I cringe as I rush to the conclusion: I will leave no mark as I happen across the lives of many, too.

All I had to do was get through it

Straighten up. Rise. Overcome. Carpe Diem. Put on my ‘big girl’ pants. Get over it. F**k it.

I sob now.

In this call to arms all I can remember is failure. There are choirs and chirping birds still singing the coward I am into oblivion. An openness of eyes beneath my ire, as I refuse to flow to the other side. Hopelessness galore.

Don’t remind me that I can actually get through it, John.

You will find your true love, in the end

But this is also an illusion, the ultimate illusion, that makes life bearable.

The finding of love, and I say this as the lover of love that I am, is not the end of anything. It doesn’t happen at the end either. You will find love, true or not, on your way to something else.

In the end, I was there, in a full-blown mental argument slash serendiputous confession with John Giorno, there nonetheless, plucking my thoughts from obscenity (off-scene), and organizing them one by one.

I had finally figured out that Poetry is the sixth illusion that makes life bearable.