Empathy for Fat Elvis and Notes Toward the Impeachment of Dreadx

1.

Thing is, you have to conjure Elvis, the dirt-poor kid from Mississippi,

who sucked up gospel, country and blues

till he bled them, a bruisy-eyed boy

with blistering talent and near-giddy energy—

and certainly not the sad man

of bizarrely elongated collars, peanut butter and bacon sandwiches,

and don't even get me started

on the cape.

Of course he had no idea he'd usher in

one of the goofiest eras of human god worship

ever known to our species. He couldn’t see ahead to the look-alikes,

no inkling he’d be studied

in university courses

as a Distantly Emergent

Posthuman Cultural Artifact.

(In death, of course, he's all proto-metamodern

Jesus

coming soon

to a dying planet near you).

Anyway.

When the King sings the Dixie trilogy, very very late,

when he's the Elvis no one voted for,

the Elvis who never made it onto a stamp—

you believe him. That song is way

too sad as he intermittently and obliquely

apologizes for his bloated drugginess,

unseemly giggling when he forgets the lines.

He is mourning his own

and everyone's golden beginnings,

even as he sees his own ignominious

and nightmarish end

clearly coming down the pike.

You can hear it in his voice, those final shows.

He was preparing.

2.

I've heard it said that to live a good life

you must be ready to die a good death;

in fact your life should be spent

getting ready to die.

Sounds pretty godawful, yes?

My own dread shoots through the roof.

But I know that Tibetan adepts, for one, flat-out practice.

Right down to the instant

of letting go. They are always letting go. They spend half the day unclasping.

They are completely aligned in life

with death, and yet more alive than the rest of us

because focused and clear and still.

In meditation they feel cool air actually warm

in the mouth, all the way down the throat and into the lungs,

and back out. They observe every thought

precisely when a thought

emerges like a slow liquid arrow and crosses through

and out of the mind, and they do not cling

to a self. To a story. Certainly not

to some retrievable, gold-plated past.

(Please do not cry to go there.

It is both a sentimental

and fascist delusion.)

And some adepts die sitting up. Cessation

is ambiguous; the flesh does not even degrade. Tap

a monk’s corpse and it bursts into—what? Conceptionless

nonpermanence. Rigpa shunyata dharmadatu, so many damned

formulations, so many words

for wordlessness—

or just the next hungry body.

3.

Elvis’s long-heralded return

in ’68, I think, after all of the hideous movies,

was a moderate shock. I don’t know, I guess I thought

his hair and clothes

would be mildly hippified, at the least,

what with the Summer of Love and all that.

But he dressed like a retro cartoon teddy boy, a fifties rocker

shellacked in black leather, a superhero whose superhero brothers

wore tight outfits too but could fly.

Elvis couldn’t fly. He had to manage on the ground in secret.

For all of his ironic self-inflation,

they say he was a humble and kind man, always.

He would never hurt a soul

down here.

And he had such a time singing

his self-spangled comeback. For some of it, the band was seated

in a casual circle on a very small stage, an intimate live audience,

and he kept grinning at his bandmates

like they all knew the world’s

most acutely sweet secret. They all knew the world's most acutely sweet secret,

and were letting us have it,

one quarter teaspoon at a time.

Like there wasn’t a single note

he wouldn’t die alive for.

4.

2019. People are walking around in near-cryonic

states of the soul,

when not boiling over with anger and stress.

It’s this other king, a tabloid celebrity ratcheted up

to hugely puke-worthy, banana-republic con.

Might as well say it again. Fascist.

Donald, if you really want to bully us

with your ongoing freaky, petty, and vindictive tweets,

if you want the media scandal of all scandals,

just remind us in your daily belches

that we are all going to die. Think of it!

You can get back at anyone

who has ever called you a goon or a fool

or pure moral slime on MSNBC.

Just tweet out to everyone DEATH

DEATH DEATH DEATH just whisper it

in one-hundred and thirty-nine characters

plus a tiny emoji skull.

But you won't. I know you won't.

BTW, you are too stupid to breathe.

*

BTW, I'm not intimidated by any of your tweets.

I'm strong. I can talk about all

that I don't have in this life

and I can talk about all

that I will someday not be. I've been preparing

for awhile, ok? Even today, right here.

*

Maybe we should turn the whole ugly thing

back on you. Maybe we should march in the thousands or millions

to the White House and erupt

in one glorious voice Donald Trump you are going to die!

Someday, Donald Trump, you really are going to die!

Fool yer already dead and don't know it!

Think about it, Cheeto!

At which point they'll arrest me and put me in Gitmo,

where they'll torture me till I talk.

I won’t know what to say, except Viva, viva

Las Vegas!

so of course they will kill me.

That's ok. I'm prepared.

*

Well, I'm preparing. I'm trying.

Friend, if you’re there, it would help

if you could whisper any tender,

mad truth you hold close to your life.

What I mean is, let’s collaborate.

I’ll tell you my nightmares

If you’ll tell me yours.