mmmcdxlv

“To Be a Player...”
(a flashback, etc.)

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.
And while
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 now
she was clearly
using the word
with one of its
many alternate
meanings: to trick.
The connotation,
the array of met
aphors involving
one word, if you
will, to enjoy the
camaraderie of be
ing on a team play
ing a sport, or 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 some far-off distance,
localized there (in the distance;

at first) and slowly expanding.
There is nothing else,
just this foreboding vision

that is not literally
seen, but it feels real
nonetheless, as the grand
yellowish expansion in the
distance begins to mushroom,
as it very slowly and steadily
grows upward and into the sky, 

the hue of it having been a deep
navy blue when the disturbance
first began, 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, the expansive

mass shifting from yellow to
orange (beautiful) the new sky
shifting from navy to violet,
the orange then redder and
redder and the red gets
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 what

had become; this expansion/
explosion finally makes its way 

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

that I can no longer breathe,

that is unbreathable. 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;
what was has become what was not,
what is not, and that nothing
persists, bleeds, until it is all that
is, which, makes all that was a 

was not. So.  Finally.  There is
no team with which to enjoy
conviviality, no teammates
with whom to play. No more
games, no more war, no more
playing at war, no offense,
no defense, because there
are no  adversaries,

there is no one to tackle,

nothing to pillage.
When everything
becomes nothing,
all playing ceases.

The nothing left

is not existence.

There is no victor,

no last man standing, 
no flagstaff in grip,

no grip, nor otherwise. But

what?  A bloody cloth,
half shredded, atop
a pole, flapping in
the wind. Not there.

The man stooped and

out of breath,
here to show off
the spoils that he

and his team have
so gallantly earned 

by playing
this magnificent
game. None of

it.  No one.

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!