Deconstruction of the Blues

Colonel Fuego

24 COLONEL FUEGO Younger sleep was the terror I wanted to seize that first instant of sunlight the whole bright day a bulwark against sleep but as I awoke I forgot Years later it was death lurking as I woke up As I came back to my body a voice said “You’re going to die One day phhhtt you will cease to be” “No! No!” young me silently screamed “Awful! Incredible!” It was the time of the Cuban Revolution 1959 so I was in my teens Life magazine ran an execution story one of Batista’s colonels a man of evil repute a butcher but they tossed him the honor of commanding his own firing squad Sequence of shiny color photos I remember his stern brown face sideburns mustache goatee like a baboon He marched them out into a dusty field stood at attention in front of a ditch and yelled “Fuego!” 25 How I ate up that story microexamined each picture There was only blank anger on this face Wasn’t he scared? This man was REALLY DYING How could he just order them to blow him away? How could he scream it? Did he feel triumph disdaining them as they were killing him? Was he just gritting his furious blank duty? Then came those hypnotizing millisecond snaps as he fell back into the ditch It reminded me of my countless childhood dyings clutching my chest writhing groaning toppling backwards twisted outstretched voluptuously dead But he didn’t do any of that He just doubled over caved back like a blown out sack Maybe the colonel’s feet were my first lesson in the physics of metaphysics They were all you could see of him at sequence’s end splayed sideways in relaxation on the lip of the ditch 26 Certainly my fear of death has lasted much longer than my fear of sleep I still feel the suck of it as if tracing his dusty footprints back to that first morning brightness specialness perfection of me me me framing my horrorstruck outrage for the sunlight to judge ...