mmmcdxlv

“To Be a Player...”

is a tiny portion
of a quote I just
heard journalist
Dana Bash use.
She said it from
my telephone
a couple of
minutes ago,
moments after
I awoke (at
2:30am) to be
gin my day.
She was refer
encing Vladimir
Putin, and using
the word, presum
ably in the sense
of being a partici
pant in a game,
whether it be a
team sport or
a one-on-one
match, but she
finished the sent
ence in such a way
(“...and to play those
individuals [who oppose
him; his foes, in this
case]”), that had her
clearly using it
with one of its
many alternative
meanings: to trick.
That connotation,
the array of ways to

perceive a word, if 

you will, to enjoy the
camaraderie of be
ing a team play
er, to go head to 

head with an opponent
or to toy with or
trick, the words...
the words, they
all begin to fade,
and the journalist
with them, the
cellphone, my
environment;
and in my head
I begin to envision
a fiery groundswell
in the distance,,
localized there at first

then slowly expanding.

There is nothing else 

but this grand yellowish 

expansion in the distance 

that begins to mushroom,

as it grows upward and into the sky

in slow motion, the hue of it having been

a deep navy blue at first, as the universe 

often appears around dusk or right be

fore dawn, but it starts to change
colors just as the growing and
now more orange-colored expanse
did. Steadily, the color of the
morning sky, this bubble of des

truction, its hue(s), which become
ever more bright and brilliant,
merging into one, shifts from yellow 

to orange (beautiful!) the far reaches

of the sky a bit more violet, then

orange then redder and redder. and 

as the colors converge into this

melded vermillion which gets – 

occluded? – by a window-rattling, 

overwhelming, earth-shattering,

all-engrossing N O I S E – – –
and as the evolution of the colors
in the distance become more
solid, more unified, color simply

bleeds liquidly out into the universe,
blanketing the earth in this colorful

expansion/explosion which makes 

its way to me (sitting upon what
was once a bed); it becomes the air
that I am no longer breathing, that I 

can no longer breathe. This horrific

scene engulfs vision, imagination, 

as it takes over so completely

that consciousness evaporates
into – literally? – N O T H I N G –
which has now become all that is left.

Finally.  There is no team with which 

to enjoy conviviality, no teammates

with whom to play. No more games,
no more playing at war, no offense,
no defense, because there
are no adversaries, there is 

no one to tackle,

nothing to pillage.

There is no victor,

no last man standing, 
no flagstaff in grip.

No grip.  No one.

Nothing.  None of it.

 

My eyes
open again.
I hear a new
journalist
jabbering,
and glance
to my left to
catch in the
corner of my
eye an unopened
deck of cards. Might
anyone care for a game?
But the day, the day. To
which I respond aloud,
nonsensically,
breath nearly
sapped from
the cinematic
vision, so ,that

I am all but

voiceless,
a mere whim

pered song:

to play,
to play,
oh, day,
today.
oh, just
this day
to play!