Confessions of a Town Crier

 

I was 6 the first time I cried in a cinema. 

I wept so hard the sobbing impaired my vision, 

so hard that my poor mother leaned over 

and asked if we should leave.

She thought I was unhappy, but I wasn’t.

Not at all. 

The minute the movie was over 

I wanted to feel whatever that was 

all over again.

 

And so I began my love affair with 

crying amongst strangers in the dark. 

I don’t mean being reduced to tears,

because that’s no reduction.

Crying for art is an honor. 

It’s applause with mucus and salt.

The circumstances of imagery

showing us to ourselves.

 

Actors guide us away from any shame 

we might harbor over our own weeping.

Have you ever wondered where they go 

in order to come back with this? 

Tom Cruise muscles out his tears

so it’s not crying so much as a bench press. 

Isabelle Huppert is a melting ice cap.

Penelope Cruz, a meadow at dawn.

Will Smith, mad that somebody 

got him out here looking like this — all tenderized. 

Gwyneth Paltrow, an elbow 

that’s just scraped concrete.

Psychosis seems to overtake Mel Gibson

until his tears appear to be crying him.  

Julia Roberts, a ripsnorter of weeping. 

Meryl Streep, the Chinese restaurant menu of crying.

Then there’s that lone tear that Denzel Washington

releases as he’s whipped in “Glory”;

two centuries of exploitation in a rivulet 

of vicarious damnation.

 

Tears signal an achievement of honesty, 

proof that an actor is fully in their role. 

 

Less and less we are attending

the cathedrals of crying. 

Instead, we’ve been numbing ourselves. 

Even our lacrimal surrogates in Hollywood 

have been turning their backs on us

toward age-defying procedures that 

culminate in faces that can no longer 

approximate our sorrow. 

A crisis of deadening is being passed down 

to the next generation. 

We are running from ourselves, 

evading the inevitability of emotional difficulty. 

What if my mother had yanked us up that day at “E.T.” 

and insisted that my crying was inappropriate? 

What other beauty would I have become dead to? 

What truths?

 

When my mother died I cried so loud 

I worried the neighbors would call the police: 

It’s a peculiar experience, crying that way: 

undammed, with your entire self, 

with everything in you, roaring out.

 

Our crying distinguishes us from animals.

It also arouses the animal in us. 

I didn’t know such a creature, 

a werewolf in my case, 

resided in there. 

Not a hulk but a hurt. 

You don’t access it. 

The wolf finds you. 

It drags immense sorrow

through the tiny openings

of your nostrils, eyes, and mouth. 

It’s the animal inside us that needs to speak now. 

It’s waiting, ready for a mass howling. 

I’ll be ready, how about you?