In Memory of Kurt Vonnegut

the quiet wraith figure you pass midnight on a highway as you’re driving south, crossland, out one jungle into another, he smiles back and waves and maybe you’re lucky enough to catch it. the juggler, the shepard, the king’s handyman, mocked, pushed aside, how they fell on their knees pressing their palms together, pressing through skin to bone on bone salvation, no more mystic floating spirits, but the true touch, fingering your main cables: the pulmonary artery, the spinal chord, seminal vesicle. watch his heart beat, age, stop, watch his glasses thicken, hair grow wilder in neglect. so it goes, so he said.
the human story, an ants story. a grain of sand. excruciating and simple. life is rotten, leaders lie, the good struggle and die, everyone is moved by kindness, everyone desires love, lives to laugh, but moves too quickly to really enjoy a cup of lemonade and a sunset. the complexity of a Charleston Chew is lost. so much for wine and cake and humility. so gone are lovers. so driven are we while our feet swell and heels ache from wearing pretty shoes…
a great man is dead and he’s left us everything he thought, all he learned in 84 years as a person in 14 novels, countless short stories and drafts. when you think of Kurt Vonnegut do you think of the man, weathered and humor filled jowls, beagle eyes and all or do you think of hundreds of pages, pounds and gallons of ink splashed insights, screaming V emblazoned book jackets lining your shelves, each one stained with his conciousness, a life experience purchasable in bookshops and airport kiosks, the man the flesh body, the man the paperback, one looses breath and blood flow the other gains speed.