(Poetic) Relief...?

Because I cannot stop thinking about that woman in West Harlem, about the baby who will grow up and have dreams of falling... or not:

JUMPER

One does not make the leap upward, not in this world,

as the first 9/11 victims found.

Praying perhaps for Up, they leapt...

or for the endless fall.

It did not happen.

And love is a sorry foothold

when you feel the distance multiply below.

Even children know

falling bodies gather the effect of mass;

but this is afterthought.

We choose to jump, not necessarily to smash;

when the abyss is open, love is just a fuck.

That first girl jumper—maybe she used to dream

about standing on the ledge, and then she would fly…

Love could have been that ledge, that sill—

A rope, a door, the bloody rags, a souvenir--

a tired meal, a tear

in the rotten bottomless bucket

of all the regrets she could think up in these panicky minutes--

someone else’s confession, because her own would be

pointless and boring,

would not provide the momentum she will need.

And you know, she may be thinking,

even if they find a few fingers and some doll bits,

they still like to put them in a man-sized coffin,

out of respect or maybe guilt

or embarrassment at the graphic horror a compact box might inspire-- the image of a John Chamberlain crushed car made of human parts,

vacuum packed.

Maybe she was able to fool herself, to admit:

You are the room from which

I choose to perch myself on the ledge of love

for nothing--

for the fuck,

for the useless freefall one could disguise as a launch

if the building was on fire,

and you can’t remember which one to pick,

Icarus or the one that sounds like death,

and blindly jump into that sun.