Penny’s Poem
Agosto Machado
I hope you are resting in great equanimity
But perhaps loosened from your body
You are roaming now freed from the Forbidden City
You so privately inhabited all these years
You the handmaiden
You the lady in waiting
You the nurse the cleaner the audience
Agosto behind the the scenes
Agosto the witness
Agosto the memorialist
Agosto the priest the monk the hermit
Agosto of the morning and evening prayers
Agosto praying for his friends
Agosto the art world reinvented you
And you ascended the throne
For a little while
You got a taste of what is was like to
sit at the head of the table
Shit you got a taste of what it was
like to be invited to the table!
Oh how you played it down
That was your ace
The humility
Hiding in plain sight
Agosto the trickster
All these decades we shared
Stacked one upon the other
Only a few of us knew you because to
Know you took decades
Of dropped clues
Here and there
And shared drama sorrow lives and deaths
As one by one life picked off our tribe
Remember what I read you from my memoir
Because only you would understand?
We didn’t speak about the bardo
I wasn’t there to remind you to go out thru the top of your head
I promised I would light you a candle
I promised I would pray for you
I will remind you that the demons you encounter
Are only your own thoughts
Rest in great equanimity
Know that you are not mind
Agosto you have left
and with you goes our shared history
Now there is no one left to call
Now Perhaps I too am free
Love penny