RESOLUTION
BY WILLIAM BREWER
Today is a new year and winter
and there are so many things
I’m ready to think about.
Like that it’s morning
and the power plant
is a womb for clouds.
The clouds aren’t real
because no matter
how hard I look I see
only clouds in them, not rabbits
or a pirate ship or hands.
The sliding glass door
before me should be cold
if I touch it but it won’t be
because I can’t feel anything anymore
after flooding my body
too many times
with an army of synthetic soldiers.
I know now this isn’t
a solution. I now know
so much more. I know
that last night five thousand
blackbirds dropped dead
over an Arkansas suburb
and it wasn’t my fault.
I’ve only ever killed a robin
and I’ve never been to Arkansas.
This year I won’t feel
responsible. Last night
I was out on the deck
watching fireworks chew
through the air, flocks
of green and gold that showered
back to earth. Last night
in Arkansas, nightfeather
was everywhere. Did they fall
at once or scatter? This year
I won’t ask questions
like these and I won’t be
disappointed when
I’ve come up with an answer.
I don’t need answers.
I can go to the mailbox
and find a tally
of the grams I’ve shot-up
equated to the hours
of daylight I’ve got left
and be fine, knowing
that it’s time to make
some changes. Last night
was the last night
I’m high. I mean it. While everyone
was drinking and ringing in
the New Year, I stood in the yard
and decided that sometimes
you have to tell yourself
you’re the first person
to look out over
the silent highway
at the abandoned billboard
lit up by the moon
and think it’s selling a new
and honest life.
All you’ve got to do is take it.
It’s simple, even when you know
you’re not the first
to stand on a lawn of frozen dark
and scratch his arm
dreaming of the future.
I know there are ways to feel
different than how I do
just before the train pulls in,
or when I walk the halls
when everyone’s asleep,
or when I’m asked to hold
the shotgun, or when my brother
won’t give me cash when
he’s just trying to help
and way back
in the ruins of my mind,
I want to make a blackbird
of him. I’m capable of that.
And so are you. I dreamt
disappointment
is like finding a balloon
in a drawer. Once it floats out,
you can’t fit it back in.
It just hangs there.
I just hang there on a string.
This year I won’t be
okay with that. In two days
I’ll admit myself
in exchange for putting out
the white fire on my scalp.
A paper cup, a pill,
an I.V.’s plastic needle
dry-humping an old
stab spot. My bones
will announce themselves
by packing up and moving out,
I’ll melt into my bed sheets
like I used to melt
into upholstery. They’ll say
the hard part’s coming.
When you can’t
take anything for the pain,
the pain takes you.
I’ll wait. I’ll be ready,
I’ll look out
my picture window
where across the street
they’ll be building a bigger,
better ward. Open floors
of steel stacked up
with tarps for walls
that fill like sails,
a galleon on the caustic waters
of the troubled. Blasts
of light from welders
like headless phoenixes
that would burn my eyes
if closer. Two things
brought together
through an arc
of white energy. I like
the sound of that.
But I’ll be there to pull myself apart.
It’ll start. I’ll hear
a blizzard coming
and think maybe someone
should do something about it.
The cold is already here,
filling up the window.
Maybe the window
was a bad idea?
Imagine that, the first window.
All that light bursting in.
No wind. And the world,
finally at a distance.
A thing to be looked at,
not felt.
