Red Clay Weather

My Immortal

—51 My Immortal —For Brad Richard A hero is a monster, isn’t he? The boy I know is a road through when dressed up in mortality, incognito under all that skin. He dissolves the colors, dismantles glory, and thrives on lack of light. The gods feed on human death, especially the ones who say I am the only one; men die lying miraculously near each other. He sits crushing pieces of world between his palms: it’s what gods do, or so he’s read in handbooks, manuals, how-to guides. Thales says the world is water, and he pours it from open hands, not knowing how deep is far enough. There are laws concerning bodies colliding, the bias of bent wings: he wants to learn them, break them one by one. He drifts half-dressed through adolescence like some courtyard Eros, grows up to be a slaughterhouse. No god could survive such hindered devotions, warlike densities hacking a path through him—his introspection and wounded politics, his ache and assignation of blame. (He stinks of cumin, cloves, and ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cardamom: a cargo of rare commodities shepherd text-2.indd 51 11/22/10 2:07 PM —52 to keep that meat from rotting. They cost too much.) The fall of Rome is never-ending, a desperate grandeur, all nothing lent an air of what once was: the cracked basilicas and toppled colonnades quarried for next century’s aqueducts, retaining walls, an intricate wound to be paved over. He rains stature on late landscapes made of marble, made of granite, made of bronze; stands up to wind, rain, snow, or any weathering. A country wears its history on its skin, strip-mine and clear-cut scars, landfills, slag heaps. The cure of birds, the animal rain, sunset was singing God is dead but wouldn’t say which one. shepherd text-2.indd 52 11/22/10 2:07 PM ...