This could Be the Final submission | Teen Ink

This could Be the Final submission

April 7, 2010
By KICK3593 PLATINUM, Roslyn Heights, New York
KICK3593 PLATINUM, Roslyn Heights, New York
49 articles 0 photos 74 comments

No I’m not at all troubled
about the end of the universe. I’m just worried
about me, that’s all. You know, it’s only life
that encompasses me,
it’s all that turns out to be for me,
it is the world, it is the universe; when I am dead the entire world
and the entire universe will mean nothing to me, right? so we are quite worried about life.

What would a great person say? What would be the thing to say? Woody Allen himself
talked about it a lot. Ingmar Bergman was always asking about what he should do.
Martin...let’s not talk about him. Virginia Woolf,
Ernest Hemingway, Kawabata, killed themselves, whatever. So what’s
to talk about. There is great things,
crevices in the earth,—I mean craters—,* savannas—what a word that is—
myths, pessimists, anime, graphic novels, Latin vanity,
Ecclesiastes, short stories, Stoicism, E. M. Forster,
Modernist literature and authors, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

There are whatevers about divinity and absolutes.
There is heaven and hell, not bad; some people talk about limbo, sometimes.
There is… suicide bombers, aesthetic choices, that’s what I’m getting at here…
Quentin Tarantino, Chinese philosophy and Hermann Hesse,
the Mediterranean region, Europe—scratch that—England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy...ah.
World War One, all the nations that were formed after World War One; Benito Mussolini,
I guess, after you think about all the crazy stuff
he did in boarding school. Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, New York City as a whole
and New York City in small pieces. The state of New York, the Northeast
of the United States summed up and all. Emily Dickinson.
James Fenimore Cooper, Herman Melville—scratch that—,
the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain,
Jack London, Naturalism, anti-heroes, Ezra Pound?
Pillows, beds with springs, tents, blankets,
candles. But what’s to talk about when
that is all part of the past?
What’s to talk about that? What’s to talk about
when all you are really entitled to use is
adjectives and nothing else?

But hey, it's all right. There're a couple of things,
here and there, that I can relate to.

*Yes I DO the "--," 's


The author's comments:
The title does not mean that this will be my final post on TeenInk or anywhere. By submission, I mean a submittal of the self to the self, the mind meeting the soul.

The poem is of course autobiographical. It was inspired by a scene in Woody Allen's "Manhattan" in which he is contemplating life:

"Alright, why is life worth living, that's a very good question. Well, there are certain things which I guess that make it worthwhile. Like what? Okay. Um, for me? Uh, ooh, I would say, what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing. Um, and Willie Mayes, and the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, and Louis Armstrong recording of Potato Head Blues...Swedish movies, naturally. Sentimental education by Flaubert. Uh, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Uh, those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne. Uh--the crabs at Sam Woo's...Tracy's face..." and then comes that great Central Park running climax and the denoumet in the lobby and then the final portraits of Manhattan to Rhapsody in Blue. It's a great movie.

Enjoy whatever of this you can relate to.

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