poem of the day 02.25.09

sometimes you wonder what right you have to feel a certain way about things. i got some news about someone yesterday. i knew her decent enough but we weren't close. shit, i don't typically preface poems here, but i feel like i need to this time. anyway, here's what i was feeling, right or wrong, justified or not.

everything is dead

everything is dead
and i watch the dead
choking on bags of potato chips
on stalled rush hour trains
thinking about someone i knew
in buffalo
who died suddenly at age thirty-three.
everything is dead
and i email one friend
and he tells me that she was sick all week
and died in the hospital monday night
which is all the information he has
another woman, a woman who
hates me,
writes and says she was sick all week
and collapsed in her apartment
dead
before the cops could do anything to save her.
which is it?
i wonder
goddamned, we live in such an era
of technical excess
a digital fantasia of useless information
and i can’t even get a simple answer
about simple death.
ain’t that the way it always is?
and everything is dead today
this train
these people choking on cholesterol
and cell phones
buffalo and everywhere else too
today’s sun is dead
setting over the ruins of brooklyn
and in the atlantic avenue station
they have art work plastered where
nike ads used to be
but for a limited time only.
it is supposed to be beautiful and inspiring.
i understand this.
there is a van gogh and a picasso
a basquiat and one by cézanne
i recognize them.
they are artists to me
and little else.