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October 4, 2002  Poet Anne Sexton took her life today, October 4th, twenty eight years ago in 1974. She was not yet 50. To get to her final resting place at Forest Hills just south of the city, I braved hellish traffic, a snarl of freeways hovering over downtown Boston like the asymmetrical web of a poison-filled arachnid, a spider so full of bad juice that it's too stoned on its own venom to weave a concentric web. And it had to be TODAY, not tomorrow .. TODAY, for all its grim significance. The day was gray and cold, winter definitely asserting early warnings with every gust of wind and occasional spit of rain. After a long search on foot I found Anne's final earthly address, and I bent down and I kissed her sunken granite name. I kissed the A, the pair of N's and the E. Then I sat down beside her marble box of bones and I read her a poem of my own called "Bring It On" from Dogbowls & Ashtrays.  I read with gusto to the listening trees, my robust oration shouted out for more than just Anne, but for the ears of my own once-suicidal self, and for a young man I know only as Kell who, just hours ago I'm told, ended his own young life. Though I never knew Kell, I know his childhood friend Catherine and could feel her heart breaking across 3500 miles of America and hear her agonized screams despite the inherently muted nature of email. I longed to hold her, to drink her tears, to smooth the hair from her face. I suppose then that I recited less for Anne or Kell than for Catherine, my dearest Catherine so full of love for the world that she can barely keep still long enough to sleep at night. Hers is the biggest heart I believe I have ever had the joy to meet. Again, I wished I was with her in New Mexico and not some gray New England graveyard. I wished I was with her to hold that heart, to keep it safe from so much sadness and self-inflicted death. I read my life-affirming poem aloud to the bones of poet Anne, to the darkening trees of dusk and all those silent stones. And when I was done I sat still, my ass cold and wet on the ground, my mind slate gray. I closed my eyes and pondered Catherine's grief-stricken cries, sentiments such as serving out our life sentences and that this ache might be all there'll ever be. This was not the spirit of the Catherine I knew. But then who of us is ever sane in the throes of grief and especially "when the gorgeous gentle warriors we've come to love give up too soon..." We who are left behind are "as unreasonable as any wild animal.. in spasms of sorrow too enormous.. (to bear alone)." Since September 11th of last year, hope for a world of peace seems permanently doomed, or at the very least, critically wounded. Poets, artists, lovers, children, anyone awake enough to daily smell the flowers and marvel at the sky, all of us feel the ugliness lingering out there in the world, and it makes us sad. For those already sad, the sadness has deepened.. Today I came to a graveyard to honor a big-hearted poet named Anne, a writer I consider a compatriot of sorts both because of her struggles with depression and because I share her stated sentiment, "I wrote sad, but I Iived happy." I honor you, Sweet Anne. I must however dedicate this day to another woman, one quite alive, whose no-holds-barred brand of love is so big it could very well someday envelope the Earth and save us all from suicidal sadness, terror, hatred, the whole enchilada of evil, if you will.  Thank you Anne Sexton for placing in my hands your first book of poems, "To Bedlam and Part Way Back" at a time when I needed a reminder that it wasn't my time to go. And to you Catherine, for whom there is no spoon, just two loving bodies in parallel fetal embrace. I'm deeply sorry for the loss of your childhood friend Kell. I hope this letter conveys as much. Grieve as you must, then rise up and save the world, girl. We can do anything we want to! A wise Jedi once told me that. I love you, Baby Girl. With a whole lotta Good Good Juice.. Lord Duke RSM [Postscript One: I love you, too, Jill Ann, and you Sara, and you Dave, all of you, my Familia de Neuvo Mexico.] [Postscript Two: I know all my readers are asking, "What happened to August, September, The Burn?" Soon my friends.]
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