Base Jump
“Into the black hole
go the lies I’ve told, the big ones
that certain people I love
still carry around like wounds”
(George Bilgere)
I stare hard at the knuckled white
of my fingers fixed to the scaffold.
The action man figure of an instructor,
keen to get things moving, drags out
a stock phrase from his bag of encouragements:
“Picture throwing something down there
that you’d have to go in after.”
Up here on the shoulder of a giant
my brain clings hard to the obvious.
I picture the wide, blue eyes of my girlfriend,
her mouth guppying the air as I
sacrifice her to the ache of the abyss.
GI Geoff was right I do feel lighter.
It’s so simple, I throw my neurological problem after her,
and the broken doorstep, and my dodgy knee,
and my inability to forget all those wrong things
I’ve said at just exactly the right time, like:
“No one appreciates a decent flush
like a bulimic.”
Every self-indulgent line of earnest verse,
and each of the many alcohol-fuelled mistakes,
well except maybe that one,
and every itchy flake of failure,
until all that’s left is the real problem.
Alone, unbound on this rock,
forgetting there’s an automatic parachute
attached to my back, I finally let go.
09