Divina is Divina
My beloved had a friend.
My beloved is Johanna.
Her friend is Divina.
Of course, my beloved’s real name is Marko
and her friend’s real name is Hector.
My beloved brought Divina to my home.
She spoke no English.
I spoke no Spanish.
Of course I spoke a little Spanish and
Divina tried a little English.
My beloved and I have two dogs.
Divina loved our dogs and took them out.
When she came to visit she would stand outside
and cry, Johanna, and inside the dogs would cry.
My beloved’s friend Divina died.
Not suddenly. Not prettily, not like anyone should die.
She died in a hospital in the city of New York
and no one knew her name.
She was Hector Gomez.
She had no family.
She lay quiet and still and faded into the world.
No one in the hospital knew Divina.
If we had stood outside and shouted her name
they would have walked us to the side and asked
us to leave.
They wouldn’t have been jumping up with joy to hear our cry
like my dogs, like Johanna, like me.
So my beloved’s friend met her end alone.
In a city hospital.
With no dogs prancing around her.
No flowers blooming.
Even though it was spring.
You could say, and you should,
what the fuck is this.
You could be angry, and you should.
What kind of world tosses humans in the trash.
But that would be like asking why the leaves
blow in the fall.
It would be like asking why flowers wilt in hot sun.
It would be like asking why Hector is Divina.
Hector is Divina because the flowers bloom!
Hector is Divina because the sun rises!
Hector is Divina because she is.
Because we are.
Because the sun is.
Because we die.
Because.
Because.
Hector is Divina because we need to hear
someone outside our door crying our names.
Divina is Divina.
Talking With Nat
Today I spent the end of the day talking with Nat.
Nat is a tall, black man in his sixties.
He worked as a printer for most of his life.
Before he became a printer he was a drug addict,
a stick up man, a con man, a crook.
He was, in his own words, a disappointment to his mother.
Nat and I talked about regret.
About what we could have been.
Both of us working at Acme Exterminating.
Me a salesman, him a part time stock boy.
A stock boy.
A man that used to stroll into policy joints with a shotgun
cocked and ready.
We each regret the stupid choices we made.
He remembers his wife.
He thinks of the house he could have had.
He talks of children unborn.
Of money pissed away.
Not so different than me.
I tell him it’s not that bad.
I say, wasn’t it a gas to knock over a joint?
Wasn’t there a rush of pleasure to run down the
street with a sack of cash.
He says, Yeah man.
He says, but I could have had a nice home.
I could have gone into the army and they’d have made a man of me.
I say, but you are a man.
He says, I could have moved back with my wife.
We could have had children.
I say, me too.
We all could have done things a little different.
But for a bad pick here and there we all might
be accountants in a nice house in Lakewood.
But there’s something to be said for sitting in a little room
with your friends.
Smoking good weed and planning some wild scheme.
Then getting up half cocked and doing it.
Then when it’s all over sitting alone in a room with a bag of money
laughing and laughing and laughing.
It’s probably wrong to take huge amounts of drugs and
make everyone you love think you’re a worthless piece of shit.
But they never get to sit in that room.
And you do.
God gave me and Nat a gift.
He gave me AIDS and he gave Nat a job as a printer.
He said pay attention and we did.
But he took away something too.
We’d really rather be running down the street
whooping like wild Indians with the joy
of our preposterous dream.
Yes, we’re just going to get high with the cash.
Yes, it’s just somebody sucking your cock.
Yes, it all blows away and you get old and die.
But the gift we got wouldn’t mean as much
if we didn’t understand the price.
So me and Nat are sitting in Acme Exterminating
on a lovely August afternoon talking about what
could have been.