Feed the Lake

poetry

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash

Feed the Lake

“All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake." Jean Rhys

Beethoven went deaf
but that didn’t stop him from hearing music
or conducting his last symphony.
They had to turn him around to see 
the audience standing and applauding
but what he saw was Elise
at various stages of her life
transforming into one big eyeball.
The composer and the muse straddle 
its glossy white back and bob on the top 
of a lake full of moonlight’s misty music.
Luis Bunuel comes with his razor
mouthing Cut! Art is born with a flick
of a wrist.  The lake turns red, they go 
under, passing the land of fear where 
sweet flowers seduce and snap necks,
once you get your nose in them, past
the island of anxiety where you wake
in a hole and the world’s full of falling dirt,
past the archipelago of desire where someone 
spiced your stew but forbade you to taste it.
A huge tadpole named Jean Rhys floats by
saying, Go deeper! Pass the land of opposites!
The lake is infinite.  The lake is ravenous.  
No matter your river size you must feed it.  
I’m sitting on a limb of a pine looking down
at my casket being lowered in the ground.
No one’s there except for god or maybe
his advocate, reciting a list of my sins,
the worst of which is not knowing
the difference between death and life.
How to know how to live when 
the instructions are non-existent or
incomprehensible.  Is it too much 
to ask for a choice in my own birth 
or death?  The next thing I know
I’m holding on to Jean the tadpole 
who takes me to the surface, gasping
for oxygen when the boss says I need 
your report by the close of business.
The elevator goes up.
The elevator goes down.
The elevator gets stuck.
The elevator hurts.
Beethoven is muzakked
into a contemporary human
with designer depression drugs.
The button says r.e.m.
It lets me off at Feed Me lake.
A fishing pole emerges from the depths
hooks me by the throat, tugging me
up and down, down with it.