(Oh, Immobility, Death's Vast Associate)

American Poetry Review, The, Jul/Aug 1997 by Dobyns, Stephen

Oh, immobility, death's vast associate,

you are the still center around which we jog.

Could you be more than idea? Even a grave

is mounted on the earth, which rolls around

the sun, which tumbles through the galaxy,

but here my astronomy fails me. A black hole

or moment preceding the Big Bang:

an inwardness, a slumbering. But do you see

how nothing immobile could truly exist?

Yet at times in the morning upon waking

I have felt this immobility, something

holding me down: a grand disinclination.

You know how it is? Once the foot hits

the floor, there'll be no rest till bedtime.

Better not start. Better remain inert.

Immobility: you might think it the size

of the tomb. You are wrong. It's more gigantic

than New Jersey: a state dented by traffic,

a battered rectangle. I was born there.

Is this what I feel in the morning: the state

of my birth jammed in my gut? New Jersey:

locus of automotive fracas. No wonder

I can't get started. Do others have their

home states snagged in their bellies? Is this

a universal complaint? It grew in the night

and now they sit on their beds with their feet

on the rug and can't advance. All that weight:

Texas longhorns, Florida swamps. Who can doubt

they need more sleep. I need to rest, they say,

meaning a delay, a vast procrastination.

Perhaps you have felt this in the morning, a great

aloneness, as if life were fixing your blindfold

and her dark partners were raising their rifles.,

Isn't this when the faces of our enemies show up

with their meaty smiles, while our friends are out

buying straw hats with blue ribbons, high-fiber

dog food, whistles? They scratch their heads.

They are distracted just when we need them most.

And we would call to them but something has gripped

the tips of our tongues. And we would run, but we

wear bronze slippers and our knees no longer bend.

Am I turning into a statue? we ask. Am I becoming

part of a wall? Yet around us six billion people

are engaged with their day. They begin just beyond

the bedroom door. How could one possibly feel alone

in their company? Tell me, could a brick in a wall

ever feel isolation? Or a drop of water in a pond?

At any moment on the planet, buckets of sperm

are being propelled forward, enough excrement

is cascading downward to pack a Mack truck.

Freeze this moment and a million morsels

are frozen on their journey to the tongue

as thousands of the sated suck their teeth.

Scratch your balls and five,hundred others

duplicate your gesture. Groan, cough, fart,

sing-you are not alone. Are you worried?

Millions are worried. Are you happy? Millions

laugh with you. Or you sit in a corner moaning,

I am so sadly solo! In a thousand corners,

kindred notions plague your brothers and sisters.

To divide these sufferers across the entire day

means seventy thousand souls for every second.

Their joined sighs would overwhelm the thunder.

Burps, trips, flops, sleeps, hopes, slips:

you get the point. So let's return to the problem.

Do you think no one understands you? Do you find

only an indentation in the depths of heaven?

Shrug your shoulder, throw up your hands, say,

What's the use? At this second the same words

are being spoken in Urdu, Farsi and Dutch.

Robbed of aloneness and particularity, we feel

most human in aloneness and particularity.

Even as I pen these words, a solitary Pakistani

is posing a poem on similiar themes, though his

of course is not so hot. What is this barrier

in the brain that believes nothing exists

on the other side? What point does it serve? If,

like a turtle's shell, it's meant to be protective,

how am I kept safe by the illusion of isolation?

Consider, for instance, the ants: don't they

jointly make a mental puddle, as if the colony

collectively composed a single brain? Consequently,

each ant forms only a fragment. This one represents

part of a vague feeling of dislike, and here

is a smidgen of hunger or love or laughter.

Ten together produce a thought, one hundred create

an elemental philosophic question, like, what

is the excuse for this lonesome antheap anyway?

Possibly we humans perform a similiar function

and six billion make up your basic cerebrum. This

must be why the earth is round and head-shaped:

a single cranium swirling through the void, trying

to articulate the answer to Why and Why not, trying

to work out the conundrum of its creation and why

anything should happen next. So when you feel lonely,

it only means you are not being thought at this

particular moment. Your turn will come tomorrow

or next week. You are a gray cell used primarily

to investigate the metaphysical and today the brain

as a whole has turned its attention to pleasure,

which is why your neighbors are having so much fun,

but soon the brain will shift to gloomy thoughts

and at that time you will be called upon again.

Immobility, then, is just a time out period,

a chance to recover one's vigor, before one takes

one's place in the vast articulation of Why Bother?

How could a brick in a wall ever feel lonely,

or a grain of sand within the Sahara. Clearly

you are wrong to feel this emotional dislocation.

A library is a spot where outworn reasons may relax,