For my father, whom I remember with fondness and complete love, and whose passing I celebrated with this constructed artifice written in the early '90's. Reading this poem aloud in a college poetry class brought on performance panic attacks that haunted me for over two decades. Nothing is simple.
I
STUDIED
CAREFULLY
THE
METHOD
IN
YOUR
DEATH
FOR EDWIN A. MERRICK III, 10/1/14-
4/9/85
I saw you
to auditions,
steering a
rented wheelchair past
many things we daily take for granted,
onto an antiseptic stage
where your veins were infused
with some hack director's concept
of the
substance of the play;
to no good
end, for in the
end there
is no stifling this playwright's primal theme.
Of necessity, father mine, no doubt, the play will
out.
You could
not choose a role to play
but one was
chosen for you
whose
costume fit you badly
as if made
for another actor. You
had to wear
it anyway: After all, you
were the
star.
The play progressed by agonizing stages,
its scenes redundant,
its
audiences losing patience, stalking out in anger, only to
return,
drawn by the perverse lure of its potent message. I
became your
own reluctant understudy, awake whole nights
attendant
to your every breath, attentive to impending change, alert for
the cue to your final scene,
prompting you the lines you dropped. I
turned you
on your side for exercise. I
bathed your
static wounds. I
fed you
false encouragement,
laughing at
the jokes and clapping, quietly.
One night,
when
dramatic momentum stalled, I
quit the
room for air. You
took
advantage of my brief absence
to
demonstrate artistic independence.
On that
pitch-black stage, to that empty house,
you
performed the denouement.
No
applause.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/scottmerrick
