Poem a day 2015: 9

Hanging Out with Mark Twain

I have been living lately with Mark Twain

or at least a voice actor inhabiting Mark Twain

as he burbles through day after day, week

after week, month after month of his latter days

here on earth, April, May, June, July, August,

1906, offering thoughts on a series of

incompetent investments, his bone deep

laziness, his conviction that the gods we’ve

invented are not worth believing in, that

the god who exists is so amoral and cruel

that all praise for it is misguided,

that to die is to cease, completely,

and thus not give a shit (my translation)

about those left standing -- his children’s

children’s children -- listening now to his

voice from the grave, “because I am dead,”

he says, “and long dead, I can happily tell you

exactly what I am thinking with no fear of reprisal,

no moral complications, no need to lie or bend

the truth to suit social conventions, no need

to spare my friends any embarrassment or

my enemies the excoriation they so richly

deserve.”  Mark, or Sam, as I’ve come to

think of him, is a great friend -- he tells me

everything he’s thinking -- and if he doesn’t

really have the talent of listening?  Well, so

be it. Mark walks with me and the dog

around the block, keeps talking as I scoop

her warm droppings and twist their stink

into a Festival bag, muses further as I kick

the dust off and wipe Willow’s paws,
holds forth while I make an omelet and put in

a load of yoga clothes. He might have an opinion

about my domestic chores, their mundane

orbits, but he keeps that to himself, amused

by the waters of the past, inspired by ancient grudges

and moldy mistakes. He offers, he says,

dictation, he is open (as we all are) to suggestion

from his surrounding environment, he is an idea

antenna, bringing in signals from his dead present

and his further dead past, and I am happy to take

all of him in as I wash the dishes and wipe the sink.