One more for you guys.
This is titled "The Lazarus Project" and it is for Barbara.
Some things can't be explained.
Your mother's illness, for example,
or why scientists have invented a cell phone
charger that runs on urine.
Rheobatrachus silus has become the first extinct frog
to be cloned.
It reproduces by swallowing its own eggs
and regurgitating its young.
You say you don't know anyone who loves their kids
but doesn't regret having them.
I babysat for a friend on her birthday,
by 3:00 AM her daughter's eyes are flickering
street lamps at the mouth of the alleyway leading into sleep.
At 4:00 AM her mother calls.
I'm in the middle of sucking this guy's cock.
Love is a black horse named Falada who has seen too much.
When you worked at the amusement park
you were the first to find the man on the bench at twilight.
He'd blown his head open with a shotgun,
looking out over the city.
You said it was beautiful, the view.
You saw the leaves weighted down by his remains
and the tree that didn't move to stop him or get out of the way.
We drink bourbon.
And it's a wonder our stories don't end with the breath.
They go on into the night like wars, satellites,
and naked women who give up their bodies to the rain.
How elusive we can be even to our own skin.
The doctors are playing Marco Polo with the gene
in your mother cannibalizing her brain.
They say it's like Huntington's disease but not.
I say, science is the future's mythology,
we just don't know where it ends.
I'm 30 and afraid it's genetic, you say.
I've been scared of everything since puberty.
I've only ever slept with one man
and I feel grotesque like Alice Hindman.
You took photos, black and whites,
for 10 years of your mother's illness.
It's settled into her like the stain of a tanning
wine on a snowy cloth.
Everything she was, taken.
Her blonde hair and beauty, everything taken but her voice.
I dream of the head of that horse nailed to the drywall
sky.
What would it say to the body?
She's not my mother.
I don't even love her anymore.
Flipping through your portfolio, I
am struck by the image of her hand wrinkled over an ashtray.
How she smoked but now can't even close the dishwasher
on her own.
Your father yells at her for things she can't remember.
When she had the first seizure, years ago,
he wishes he'd let her die.
And if she only knew how the heart would rue.
Sometimes being alive is so overwhelming.
Sweat is a skin telling our story without blame.
The only thing that gets me through is reminding
myself our son will die.
I finish the bottle of bourbon and try
to talk of other things.
What we are, asterisms, and this endlessly finite
funnel of vein and bone.
We are dour because it's easy being inebriated alone.
It only rains when we aren't looking up into the sky.
Faith working its way into the shoulders like clams
into barrels of rock.
Why defend the dolorous?
A coworker emailed to say he's leaving his wife for you
but you didn't ask for this.
You asked why people call this giving up
because if you do have your mother's illness
you'll live longer than she will.
You like movies, and music, swimming in the ocean,
and making art.
That's enough.
Even science is starting to believe
we might actually be alone.
Each black hole holding another solar system
in its heart at its center another void
with its own possession of stars and endless tunnel.
We are barreling through the universe like a slug.
We may never know a resurrection outside the sacred walls
of this test tube.
Our bodies overflow with whiskey and other things we cannot
understand like love.
I brought you flowers to replace the bourbon.
I left them on the liquor shelf.
Try not to let it wreck you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]