Parachute

The Bergman image of a game

of chess with Death,

though not in a dreamscape

black-and-white as melancholy

films clanking with symbols,

but in a garden in Provence

with goldfish in the fountain

and enormous palms whose topmost

fronds cut into the eternal

blue of sky above the Roman

ruins and the dusty streets

where any door may lead to life’s

most perfect meal: that is what

I think of when I remember

I have AIDS. But when

I think of how AIDS kills

my friends, especially

the ones whose paths

through life have least

prepared them to resist

the monster, I think of

an insatiable and prowling beast

with razor teeth and a persistent

stink that sticks to every

living branch of flower

its rank fur brushes

as it stalks its prey.

I think of that disgusting

animal eating my beautiful friends,

innocent as baby deer. Dwight:

so delicate and vain, his spindly

arms and legs pinned down with needles,

pain of tubes and needles, his narrow

chest inflated by machine, his mind

lost in the seven-minute gap

between the respirator’s failure

and the time the nurses noticed

something wrong. I wrapped

my limbs around that fragile body

for the first time seven years

ago, in a cheap hotel by the piers,

where every bit of his extravagant

wardrobe—snakeskin boots, skin-tight

pedal pushers in a leopard print,

aviator’s scarves, and an electric-

green capacious leather jacket—

lay wrapped in a corner of

his room in a yellow parachute.

It's hard enough to find a parachute

in New York City, I remember thinking,

but finding one the right shade

of canary is the accomplishment

of the sort of citizen with whom

I wish to populate my life.

Dwight the dancer, Dwight the fashion

illustrator and the fashion plate,

Dwight the child, the borderline

transvestite, Dwight the frightened,

infuriating me because an anti-AZT

diatribe by some eccentric

in a rag convinced him not to take

the pills with which he might

still be alive, Dwight

on the runway, Dwight on the phone

suggesting we could still have sex

if we wore “raincoats,” Dwight

screwing a girl from Massapequa

in the ladies’ room at Danceteria

(he wore more makeup and had better

jewelry than she did), Dwight planning

the trip to London or Berlin where he

would be discovered and his life

transformed. Dwight erased,

evicted from his own young body.

Dwight dead. At Bellevue, I wrapped

my arms around his second skin

of gauze and scars and tubing,

brushed my hand against

his plats, and said goodbye.

I hope I’m not the one

who loosed the devouring animal

that massacred you, gentle boy.

You didn’t have a clue

to how you might stave off

the beast. I feel so confident

most days that I can stay

alive, survive and thrive

with AIDS. But when I see

Dwight smile and hear his fey

delighted voice inside my head,

I know AIDS is no chess game

but a hunt, and there is no

way of escaping the bloody

horror of the kill, no way

to bail out, no bright

parachute beside my bed.

Copyright Credit: Tim Dlugos, "Parachute" from A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos. Copyright © 2011 by Tim Dlugos. Reprinted by permission of Nightboat Books.

Source: A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos (Nightboat Books, 2011)