Ambassador Hotel

All of humanity comes to a hotel pantry.
All walks of life. Like a restaurant or a barroom.
I’ve seen it myself. So has everyone.
Add to that the roiling boil of a primary,
The heights of the American theater.
Like a full moon.
All emotions raging, rage itself,
Ugliness to match all the good,
To say the least.

A shy man who liked the cloak of sorrow,
His brother’s old jacket,
A little too big for him,
He was an awkward fellow socially,
At least in some ways,
Who considered and thought about
Every word, well spoken.
A phone’s ring was enough to make him
Sick to his stomach.
(His brother helped him with that,
With gifts,
As if to say,
'Come, my shy one. Come to the miracle.’)
And yet, in that sorrow and anxiousness
He came to find a joy.
And the crowds came,
To touch him. Lowered through a roof,
They came.
And he gave himself to the poor
And a transcendent call for sorrows
To be joys.
Like he did in Indianapolis once,
Needing no teleprompter,
Quoting the Greeks.
Human nature is fine,
But ultimately,
Or at least sometimes,
At least now,
You need to transcend.

You cannot see behind you.
You cannot see what’s coming.
They put him in that car once,
The Lincoln,
Refurbished. How’s that for chills.
They didn’t tell him, and he didn’t say anything.
In Chinatown the day leading up to it,
A firecracker went off.
He flinched, his expression clinched,
But then he went on.
Shaking hands that reached up,
As normal.
As you know, he hadn't even wanted
To go down there.
He felt he'd earned it
To watch the whole thing at a friend's house.
The networks wanted him.
And one of the photos, just before it happened,
Shows a man, though gracious,
Kind of over it,
Just wanting to get through the hallway.
People enjoying victory
Can be a tedious thing.

To the pantry, as the quick speech had ended,
one man had come.
A kid. Really, just a kid.
Such people always show up,
Right at the worst moment,
The moment of vulnerability.
Like the perfect loudmouth.
The perfect asshole.
Manic, grandiose.
Perfect timing.
"I'm not disturbing you,
Am I?"
Just the way it is.
No handy herd of swine
To caste the devils into.
And you feel sorry for him, the rude individual, somehow,
Despite the real pain he causes you.
Because behind his wide-eyed smile,
He is hurting,
And cannot help himself.
That is why he's come to you.
One man in the pantry,
A revolver in his coat.
Typical.

“And now it’s on to Chicago,
And let’s win there.”
The teacher, a thumbs up,
A hand brushing hair to the side,
a smile, a gentle peace sign
for victory.
Toward him, strangely,
He came, in through pantry doors.
A busboy ahead of him
In a white jacket.
And he, Bobby, little brother,
Could not be clear enough in that instant,
For he had no time to say even a word
When the arm reached around someone,
Over the metal table,
Not fast enough after a long day
To turn rage and the sorrow
Into an embrace,
As it was, it is, a man’s job.
An ecstasy from dung.
(The crowds too, remember,
Were nervous, ‘til they saw him,
‘til he spoke.
Even newsmen, highstrung.
And he put them all at ease.
For he had that gift coming from the deep.)

Unspeakable things he knew,
And they came to him, in flashes,
As he lay there,
On the floor, speechless.
He knew some things were true
The things he had been working on
And come to represent.

Long walks the man had gone on
To learn how to do it,
To turn the mourning into good,
After reveling in it, maybe just a bit,
(Who can blame him?)
As any Irishman would,
Knowing the logic of it,
The conservation of emotional mass to transmute,
Collecting a sizeable portion of grief,
His own Job’s share.
Joy followed him
Like a dog his master.

They took him away, clumsily,
In an ambulance.
He died a day later
And his spirit went away
To where they come from.
The funeral.
The remaining brother,
In keeping with the man,
Had it right as he spoke,
'A good and decent man,'
To say the least.
America watched the train pass
One hot day
On television.
A flag-draped coffin
In black and white,
As under glass.
America went down
To the tracks themselves
To see it go by, in person,
That day. A people who do things
Only for good reason.

There is something terribly gentle to us,
In love with nature, in love with the world.
Something wonderfully brave.
We might want to forget about it
As if to go on with our lives.
But we can’t.
It is our grip
On a planet that tilts
To keep us from sliding off.
Yet anyone who does that
Brave thing of love
Takes a risk.
The poor sweet guy, lying there,
With all his talents and his wisdom,
On the floor, keeping us all
From sliding away into cold vacuous space.

“What makes you so sad,” a little girl once asked him,
quietly, as he bent down in the crowd in some place like Indiana
To place his hand softly on her head,
As if to brush her hair
In the midst of all the things he had
To get done that day.
And he laughed and smiled,
As she looked up
Quizzically, blue-eyed
With innocent wisdom,
Upon his face
That look we all knew of him,
Unique to him,
A sweet kind of crinkle in the corners of his eyes,
The wide toothy smile,
But now a wetness to his eye.
“Oh, it’s not because I’m sad,” he said,
Quite softly and privately to her
As people and parents looked on.
“It’s just because I’m in love.”
Like Lincoln got his beard.
He touched her face and looked down at her again,
And then he moved on, on into the crowd.