GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ IS DEAD
“Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai” —Rimbaud
1.
So Molière’s character didn’t know he had been speaking prose all his life
& the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him
of unrequited love’s fate
while surrealism runs through the streets of Mexico I hear
although I assume the same about France although it’s impractical realism
ce truc n’est pas une hallucination, je te le dit May flowers do their evil
in this season of hell empty love’s crushing fate
the way children pick flowers & leave them crumpled beside a curb
another reminder that death horizons life
eventually you reach it
& sometimes cigar smoke is just the Cuba I’ve never reached
although scent’s a chain of molecules sparking words
another chain of molecules
a throat transforms into sound’s enactments
of curiosity & bliss
not prose all of our lives we should speak ourselves
which turns itself out poetically & not platonically
despite requite
of curiosity & bliss I love talking with you
as though I can hear the symphony a sun makes
despite the dead of lightless space
which is far too platonically prosaic I hear
inside our sun’s a spooky orchestra
the beauty of which never exceeds itself
to reach our ears here
but I’ve seen America with no clothes on she sings
in a strange & estranging light
if the sun were to unquestionably die right now
we would live under the assumption
it still burned for roughly one last cigarette at least
the delay’s a distance
& Gabriel García Márquez dies
while we live under different assumptions
for instance Lady Liberty wears poetry beneath her robes of justice
& Captain America’s square jaw believes in truth
when in truth de Tocqueville’s democracy (ne plus
ultra) lives under the antipoétique thumb of an invisible hand
which means it keeps flipping me off
while you speak sunny prose all of our lives
2.
So the USA Today article reports that he was a socialist
friend of Fidel Castro
& sharp critic of what he considered U.S. imperialism
for years he was denied a visa to enter the U.S.
but in 1994 García Márquez dined with President Clinton
who called him “my literary hero”
all of which is undoubtedly prose
while gravities pull against my heartbeat
whether it’s nobler to become or to live a common imagination
brought to you by the makers of a global lingua franca
for in this death of sleep what American dreams may come
especially in form of speech’s change
it’s better to have spoken prose and won
than to have loved at all
particularly?
I remember so little lately
I’m practically the evil twin of Joe Brainard
brought to justice in the latest Marvel epic
a summer blockhead buster a spectacle to star my eyes
when Captain America grits his very white teeth
on downtown Beijing billboards
made of free market freedom
this is how the world ended
not with a bang
but with branding
& Gabriel listens to another winter of the monarchs
wing the song of a long ago time of a far off future
right now anything but prose
anything but a lingua franca
for selling memorabilia & meanwhile
atop Mt. Sinai I feel Coke
& somewhere an old white man on Viagra & vacation in Aruba
dreams up The Collected Poems of Sasha Grey
to frame cinematic legitimacy
frame by slow motion frame
to frame the limits of a common imagination
tagged American
a very soft imperialism
Lady Liberty wears beneath her robes of justice (at least
what Oscar Wilde couldn’t know
living out Fellini’s Waiting for Godot
when everything’s about sex but sex
sex is about power & while you’re waiting for it to come
you might as well be waiting on Godot) & Lady Liberty she only earns
80 cents for every dollar made by Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson & Washington
even that statue of our truthful George in the Boston Public Garden
the balls of which were painted orange once upon a time I mean
the horse’s of course 80 cents
for every dollar
to own an American edition of Molière
3.
So Molière’s character didn’t know he had been speaking prose all his life
since sound tells me what’s happening
what’s likely to happen
the way Spinoza tells me about pleasure & suffering & appetition
waiting for May to come the way it comes
a chirping saint made of sunlight & grace to have survived
another winter since sound tells me what’s happening
the ear’s our affectual sense
& there I go again
it’s bang o’clock somewhere before airing dirty Facebook laundry
& we could have stolen everything from time & space
if not for those meddling metaphysicians
who have no nose for violets the tangs of May violets
remember the violets a mélange of red & white & blue
we would get away with one another in other words je t’aime
feeling through triumph in other words
I’m grateful to say suffering
more about écriture than sprechstimme or more about
it’s so terrible for our health he says
class isn’t discussed or debated in public
class identity has been stripped
from popular culture
but who’s doing the stripping they say
I hate the term upper class it is so non-upper class
to use it
I just call it “all of us”
so Gertrude Stein is very fine but not for us O Tommy Boy
ye hardly played a convincing Possum anyway
says Flossie Williams
my mother & his were both shocked
they hated the poetry
they’d shake their heads & say
but such language! & blah blah blah
when the richest 20% of Americans hold 85% of the national wealth
let’s throw a barbeque & vote Possum because, you know
we live in a classless society what did that British philosopher ask?
now what can a poor boy do?
except write a poem called “Gabriel García Márquez is Dead”
to realize the condition of my own perception
after another winter of the monarchs
dies into the warmth of a northern sun
for in the death of sleep what dreams may come about
though I’m just an empath who suffers the disease of misanthropy
very well then I contradict myself
& by containing multitudes Uncle Walter didn’t mean
he wanted a megamall named after him
but of curiosity & bliss I love talking with you
as though I can hear the symphony a sun makes
sparking off the matter that matters
called a soul say all the energy that stays to say
it’s spring & we’re alive
& I know prose runs through your streets I see
you’d rather bury me below your apathy
than love us
at all
Editor's note: this poem appears in a smaller font to preserve the line breaks and formatting of Mr. Rizzo's poem.
Christopher Rizzo is a writer and editor whose most recent collection of poems, Of Love & Capital, was selected for the Bob Kaufman Book Prize by judge Bernadette Mayer. His latest chapbook, Was That a Real Woman or Did You Just Make Her Up Yourself?, is forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press. Rizzo’s poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in a range of publications, including Art New England: Contemporary Art and Culture, The Cultural Society, H_NGM_N, Jacket, Otoliths, Oyster Boy Review, Pierre Joris – Cartographies of the In-between, Process, Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry / Literature & Culture, Tight, and a featured author issue of Gondola. Follow him on Twitter @TheRizPo.