Aldo
Posted: April 16th, 2008, 5:28 pm
Aldo
All that lives is holy
―William Blake
I.
Aldo? He's dead. I met him many times,
but, first, we met and over Chilean wine
we talked and followed that with beer. A fine
American, we joked that both of us
were from the only continent that mattered.
A friendly man, he seemed too nice to me
at the roof party, but that changed with time.
The night grew later, time grew slower, drinks
went faster and he stopped. We have a photo
of him, alone, among the drunken.
II.
I played with children, late one night, his child,
my friends, again with beer, again with wine.
His smile, contagious when discussing plans
of family outings, barbecues, and real
children together, his and mine, at play,
and nights with beer and wine, but no time slips,
mutated when he heard one drunken slur
too many, one more comment, never meant
provocatively, but slurs can be confused
when sound passes for talk around a myth.
III.
The high school students liked his Spanish class
and high school students never tell you what
they like here. Silence permeates and spreads
like ocean fog and is disturbed by mumbles
behind these hollow walls ― A power 'play',
a private 'our'. The students told me this
and after the obligatory pause, said
they did not need his class but liked the man.
I did not tell them everything that hour:
We all keep secrets from an early age.
IV.
A different party ended well a week
before. We talked of Doctor Strange with his
red cloak of levitation and the green
Behemoth-like Hulk: bones like bars of iron.
Jay told a story of a woman reciting
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner while
in bed with him, and rumors frisked about
of past mistakes, and Aldo arrived then.
"I like the character," said Jay as Aldo
apologized for an unnatural rage.
V.
Greg's voice was deeper than his usual
apologies for early morning calls.
Disturbing pandemonian
routines, he paused and waited, actor-like,
and told me what he heard, three days before
Christmas, the day after Aldo was found
outside a love hotel, his trousers down
below his knees, his shirt undone. He told
me stories, what he did and didn't know,
and where to go and who to meet and when.
VI.
"What secret albatross was hung around
his neck?" was an aberrant, errant thought:
The mariner was cursed to live forever
telling his story. Aldo died and I
was cursed to hear his story from his mates.
I heard that he had had a few affairs,
that he was separated from his wife,
that he was going back to Mexico,
that he could hold his own when he was drunk
and that his wife and he had reconciled.
VII.
They found no alcohol in his blood stream.
The doctors told us this, and disbelieving,
we stared wild eyed at them and at ourselves.
We thought, a victim of an accident,
a slip, a fall, a trip to a prostitute
gone wrong, the risks of Aldo's life, his rage,
his bones of brass and iron unaffected
by a doctor's cloaked derision; and he,
reborn as a clutched root, was damned to bleed
among the harpies of the seventh circle.
VIII.
Still in denial, sitting on a rock
jutting beyond the shoreline, next to the breaker,
I watched the passing ships, people, and crabs
and angry at the world, I thought about
doing what you did, stopping your way:
Yes, yes, I thought about oblivion
and raised my self and walked for an hour
and in the evening I saw the face
of an old man who spoke while pouring gin:
"We haven't seen you here in a long time."
IX.
I never met his wife, I never saw
her face. She always seemed to work before
the break and was excused during the break.
They owned a bar in central Jeju, near
a city building, City Hall, I think.
I never went. I do remember her.
Greg humbly placed a Budweiser before
the shrine, an altar to his memory;
and when she saw that it was open there,
she picked it up and dropped it in a can.
X.
I recognize the need to blame something:
to see the other as a way to expiate
one's own guilt, to hear the 'toll' in glass
and metal sound throughout a room, to
give a little life to the self-righteous
comfort around you; and I hear our words,
misogyny without a point, and know
what we have lost and that from three
stories, the man who jumped is lost to all.
Your loss is ours and yours: Aldo is dead.
All that lives is holy
―William Blake
I.
Aldo? He's dead. I met him many times,
but, first, we met and over Chilean wine
we talked and followed that with beer. A fine
American, we joked that both of us
were from the only continent that mattered.
A friendly man, he seemed too nice to me
at the roof party, but that changed with time.
The night grew later, time grew slower, drinks
went faster and he stopped. We have a photo
of him, alone, among the drunken.
II.
I played with children, late one night, his child,
my friends, again with beer, again with wine.
His smile, contagious when discussing plans
of family outings, barbecues, and real
children together, his and mine, at play,
and nights with beer and wine, but no time slips,
mutated when he heard one drunken slur
too many, one more comment, never meant
provocatively, but slurs can be confused
when sound passes for talk around a myth.
III.
The high school students liked his Spanish class
and high school students never tell you what
they like here. Silence permeates and spreads
like ocean fog and is disturbed by mumbles
behind these hollow walls ― A power 'play',
a private 'our'. The students told me this
and after the obligatory pause, said
they did not need his class but liked the man.
I did not tell them everything that hour:
We all keep secrets from an early age.
IV.
A different party ended well a week
before. We talked of Doctor Strange with his
red cloak of levitation and the green
Behemoth-like Hulk: bones like bars of iron.
Jay told a story of a woman reciting
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner while
in bed with him, and rumors frisked about
of past mistakes, and Aldo arrived then.
"I like the character," said Jay as Aldo
apologized for an unnatural rage.
V.
Greg's voice was deeper than his usual
apologies for early morning calls.
Disturbing pandemonian
routines, he paused and waited, actor-like,
and told me what he heard, three days before
Christmas, the day after Aldo was found
outside a love hotel, his trousers down
below his knees, his shirt undone. He told
me stories, what he did and didn't know,
and where to go and who to meet and when.
VI.
"What secret albatross was hung around
his neck?" was an aberrant, errant thought:
The mariner was cursed to live forever
telling his story. Aldo died and I
was cursed to hear his story from his mates.
I heard that he had had a few affairs,
that he was separated from his wife,
that he was going back to Mexico,
that he could hold his own when he was drunk
and that his wife and he had reconciled.
VII.
They found no alcohol in his blood stream.
The doctors told us this, and disbelieving,
we stared wild eyed at them and at ourselves.
We thought, a victim of an accident,
a slip, a fall, a trip to a prostitute
gone wrong, the risks of Aldo's life, his rage,
his bones of brass and iron unaffected
by a doctor's cloaked derision; and he,
reborn as a clutched root, was damned to bleed
among the harpies of the seventh circle.
VIII.
Still in denial, sitting on a rock
jutting beyond the shoreline, next to the breaker,
I watched the passing ships, people, and crabs
and angry at the world, I thought about
doing what you did, stopping your way:
Yes, yes, I thought about oblivion
and raised my self and walked for an hour
and in the evening I saw the face
of an old man who spoke while pouring gin:
"We haven't seen you here in a long time."
IX.
I never met his wife, I never saw
her face. She always seemed to work before
the break and was excused during the break.
They owned a bar in central Jeju, near
a city building, City Hall, I think.
I never went. I do remember her.
Greg humbly placed a Budweiser before
the shrine, an altar to his memory;
and when she saw that it was open there,
she picked it up and dropped it in a can.
X.
I recognize the need to blame something:
to see the other as a way to expiate
one's own guilt, to hear the 'toll' in glass
and metal sound throughout a room, to
give a little life to the self-righteous
comfort around you; and I hear our words,
misogyny without a point, and know
what we have lost and that from three
stories, the man who jumped is lost to all.
Your loss is ours and yours: Aldo is dead.
