Improv 2, Week 7

My second improv for this week riffs Sandra Meeks' poem, "Mechanics of Failure"

Jumpers, we called them, as if no nerve, no marrow, still held
to flight, as if falling
wasn't in the blood, and even today the long
habit of light might not

be broken, torn
to gold laces like yellow ribbons

tied around oaks for the hometown hostage who finally
did return, blinkered

by camera flash, on eyear after
the warm June evening I was married, absurd

in formal white, beneath those noosed trees now
too easy to read in curling photographs

as caution, as remember's thread
wearing each swelling trunk to that familiar

arc of pain. Mostly
there is no warning: planes slam

into buildings, or you do your own
crash and burn, lighting life down

to a finger of ash. My ring, removed,
left a groove that took years

to vanish, what seemed scar finally
a fading, the way, after seasons, a grave settles itself

into earth, or a winter day's flock of starlings
does stop pouring east, though all morning

their crepe banner had seemed
horizon itself, the blackened sun still

enough to burn the watcher's eyes
to the gold of its own sightless image, the faith

in vision what blinds. Despite their knowledge
of velocity, despite their ability to calculate

the gravity load of the cell, the fire load
of bone, some held plastic sheets makeshif

parachutes, as they dropped, as if the world
wasn't wind, and fist, and whirling fragments

of paper; as if what we're falling from
isn't grace, isn't what,

a century ago, the newly arrived believed
they could recreate, releasing

one hundred European starlings to populate
this world new and strange

to the Shakespeare they'd read
as home, setting in motion this morning's

rolling eclipse, five million birds in one gathering, one
city of flight; so when from the 100th floor, yes,

they did jump, the question, how much of our weight
can this world bear, had already been asked

as a storm of dark wings, a wake of gray light
streaming behind.


The theme/message of this piece clearly focuses on 9/11. Yet the format is complex through the usage of couplets and enjambments. The couplets restrict the breakage and emphasize particular pauses in the lines, but the enjambments allow the thoughts to run together as a whole. In a sense, this complexity mirrors the panicky chaos that was 9/11. I wanted to capture this by focusing on a different aspect, namely that shift in time that they don't prepare you for as a child.

Childhood's Failing Grade

Lightening bugs, we named them, as if no fire, no flame, eternally branded
to flight, as if flailing

was not in the river, and even on Wednesdays the short
instances of night were probably not

mended, sewed
to blue yarn like neon fabric

emblazoned around bouncy-balls targeting the local bum who
eventually departed, staggering

past engine sparks, four years after
the humid July afternoon I graduated, mental

in noble blue, atop the beheaded blades now
bleeding picture-perfect green in magazines

as subliminal, as sing-song’s rope
bore each prickling string to that unknown

cavern of blood. Usually
water breaks, shattering shards

down pale legs, dousing those blades, or you conduct your own
symphony of breaths, washing life

over the rapids of stone. My diploma, removed,
left a trace that is still

imprinted on my wall, gash
never fading, the way centuries of gravestones

push the dead to live forever, or that fish
caught in 1989 plagues the remembers with

its ruby red lips crying for a
passion only its school can bring, the marble moon

still branding the viewers’ eyes
with faux hope, the unseen vision, the belief

in a tomorrow that paralyzes a child. Regardless of their intellectual
language, incalculable math, insensible society fails to

uplift the permanent student, the brain
echoes cataclysms of avalanches from a decade before

Barney's disillusioned the tax payer dollarw, as if
The world would forever be the jailed playpen

of puzzles, as if what we learned from
was absent, wasn’t real as,

a decade ago, the shifting faces who
would demolish the world with social media,

enslaving Generation X into a conformity
of tweets and i-thinks

I didn’t see this coming
as School House Rock cradled my mind

with the psyche of lolly, naughty figure eights that
would soon be eclipsed by the Armageddoned reality of

2010. When I jumped from my play-pen into
Y2K, I bled onto my predestined Facebook pagea

as did my diploma, my baby, my beliefs
all of me, left behind.