Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, a book written in blank verse--who can resist right? It was an interesting little story, although too many of the verses felt forced, like he was just trying to find something to rhyme and so had to include a random and inexplicable detail. But then there are some truly transcendent verses, especially about life and death, which makes sense because Rakoff died shortly after finishing this book. It was an interesting read that unfortunately maybe didn't get all the edits it needed.

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He used on what looked like a brick of pink soap 
The color of dawn, the exact shade of hope

and leaned near the surface and took in a breath 
Of almonds and ether, of freedom and death

The plum-colored smudge, a sloe slowly blooming,
 Seemed barely worth noticing; small, unassuming, 
As if trying to belie all the terrible harm it 
Could do, it stayed hidden, just under his armpit. 
But soon it branched out, making siblings and cousins
 His lesions were legion, from just one to dozens.
 Despite all his nursing, the tears and the dramas
 Of friends, when he woke up to find his pajamas 
As wet through with sweat as if dunked in the sea
 He still briefly asked, What is happening to me? 
He’d loved Touch of Evil, when la Dietrich tells 
The fortune of corpulent, vile Orson Welles: “
Your future’s all used up.” So funny and grim
. But now that the same could be spoken of him 
It was sadness that gripped him, far more than the fear
 That, if facing the truth, he had maybe a year. 
When poetic phrases like “eyes, look your last”
 Become true, all you want is to stay, to hold fast.
 A new, fierce attachment to all of this world 
Now pierced him, it stabbed like a deity-hurled
 Lightning bolt lancing him, sent from above, 
him giddy and tearful. It felt like young love. 
He’d thought of himself as uniquely proficient 
At seeing, but now that sense felt insufficient. 
He wanted to grab, to possess, to devour 
To eat with his eyes, how he needed that power.