The Book of the Dead Man (The Pause), and: The Book of the Dead Man (The Boulevard), and: The Book of the Dead Man (His Health)

The Book of the Dead Man (The Pause)

Live as if you were already dead.

—Zen admonition

Marcelo Lucero, b. 1971-d. Nov. 8, 2008
Patchogue, New York

1. About the Dead Man and the Pause

Seven young men went looking to beat up an Hispanic and found one and killed him, and the dead man will speak of it.The dead man pauses to consider, to ruminate, to extrapolate, to ponder, to chew over, to digest.He knows they wanted to stop the world, who fell in warfare.He knows they wanted to stop time, who faced the guns.The seven who stabbed to death a stranger wanted to stop their anger but could not.The dead man has to be a dead man to make it stop.He has to take stock, which takes time, time that is ravaged by entropy.The dead man has invented God.God is the filling-in of the blanks, the filling-up of the cavities and wounds, the words that blanket the cold, the eyes looking, the body expectant, the one chance in a million.The dead man has also invented the inner life.The inner life is the recreation of the young Ecuadorian knifed to death in Patchogue just days before the invention of the inner life.The inner life is the rebirth of the young Marine sharpshooter who a week earlier was memorialized by renaming a bridge.The inner life, the inner life . . . is no escape.So the dead man has invented the pause, which is God, which is the inner life. Such small particles may float free from any action that a dead man may die again, or live again, seen only by the few who pause to consider.It was the dead man who said that the purpose of life was to look out the window.What window, what perch, what time, what self?The dead man is halfway up the ladder, or is coming down.The dead man has less self than the newsworthy, less ego than the sophisticate, less purchase than the wealthy.The dead man will not sell his secrets, nor tattle.Many others must know before the dead man will admit that he knows, too.

2. More About the Dead Man and the Pause

The dead man abides in the pauses, in the gaps, the interstices, the breaches, the slits, the fissures, the chasms, the in-betweensand not-yets.Picture a clock one can reach to turn back the hands.Picture a handkerchief not yet folded.The dead man opens again the wound of the victim.When the dead man, kneeling by the body, tries to stand, he becomes nauseated.Because the dead man is you, was always you, he tallies the crimes you know from the papers, they are local.Here is the slaying of last week, and the one from last night, and the map of neighborhoods coded for killings.The dead man set out to speak of the one crime, the one whose face is on page one.The dead man tore the seven bullies in half, he could not resist.He kept alive the picture of the slain, while he crumpled the defense lawyers who have no case but their fees.Such nice haircuts, such well-fit new suits, and the defendants sit still, too.If they choose not to testify, well, the dead man will use their silence against them. The dead man wanted to write poetry, but the streets were blocked.The way forward was too loud, too fraught, it was a rebuke to the applications of beauty.The dead man can't see straight, it's you again.The dead man wanted to write about it, but police tape kept him away.The dead man is leaving it to you, what are you going to do?If the sun came out, if the handkerchief remained in the hip pocket, if the clock was on time, if the fire siren only meant lunch...