Marvin Bell

The Book of the Dead Man (#14)
(with Commentary in Footnotes)


1. About the Dead Man and Government


Under Communism, the dead man's poems were passed around hand-to-hand.
The dead man's poems were dog-eared, positively, under Communism. 1
The dead man remembers Stalin finally strangling on verbs.
And the dead man's poems were mildewed from being hidden in basements under Fascism. 2
Embedded in the dead man is a picture of Mussolini hanging from a noun. 3
The dead man didn't know what to say first, after the oppression was lifted.
The green cast of mildew gave way to the brown stain of coffee upon coffee.
Suddenly, a pen was a pen and an alligator only an alligator. 4
A pig in boots was no longer a human being, a dead man was no longer alive though everyone knew better. 5
Now the dead man feels the steamy weight of the world.
He trembles at the press of the witch hunters, their clothes like night.
He has in his memory all tortures, genocides, trials and lockups.
He sees the lovers of pressed flowers brought down by botanical poverty.
He sees the moviegoers, who kissed through the credits, stunned by the sudden light after the ending. 6
In the lobby, the dead man's manuscripts went under coats and into pockets.
Then they all went off to spill coffee and argue ethics.
The dead man is the anarchist whose eyes look up through the bottom of the glass raised in toast. 7
The dead man is sweeter than life.
Sweeter than life is the life of the dead man. 8



2. More About the Dead Man and Government



The dead man votes once for Abraham Lincoln, but that's it.
That's all he's time for (one man/one vote), so the dead man votes for Abe Lincoln.
The dead man votes with his feet, lashing his possessions to his back as if he were Ulysses tied to the mast to resist
        the siren call to stay put.
The dead man votes with a gun, disassembling it, beating the parts into scrap metal for farm implements.
The dead man votes with wet hands, a fishy smell lemon juice can't cut.
He comes in off the boat, off the farm, from the cash register and the time clock to throw down a ballot.
The dead man is there when the revolution stalls in a pile of young corpses.
It is the dead man's doing when the final tally is zero to zero.
The dead man is the freight man on the swing shift at the end of the line.
The dead man remembers the railroads run down by automobiles, the fields commandeered for storm sewers, the
        neighborhoods knifed highways.
The dead man thinks a dead Lincoln is still better than the other candidates.
He knows that death stops nothing, and he hopes to be placed among the censored.
His immortality depends on the quality of his enemies.
He sees a wormy democracy spilling from the graveyards, its fists flailing at the target.
There is hope, there is still hope, there is always hope.
The dead man and his fellow dead are the buried treasure which will ransom the future
You have only to believe in the past. 9