I met him just two months before
he died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head
everything exists in pain and imagination
and I am struck by the sharp deficit of human compassion
we have our objects and we have our nothingness
in our searching we cobble together false creation
two days prior to his death in the potato field
his hands already digging into the earth
gathering a few or a many, scattering a few or a many
acting out with more or less exactitude than a suicide
no one knows what was said or might have been said
in the face of world-annihilation
creation is a forgery
it fails to sustain, and it will fail to sustain
SM