Ron Marcus is a lifetime Baltimorean who studied writing with Tim O’Brien at Emerson College in Boston. A disciple of the poet John Berryman, Marcus can be reached via  ronmarcus23@hotmail.com. Enjoy his poem, which follows. — Rafael Alvarez

                                                                                                                      
Robert Oppeheimer: Martyr with a Radioactive Half-Life
 
The disquieted ghost of Memory
haunted me and
Remembrance attacked me from my blind side of disbelief
from somewhere miles deep
inside the rotting, moldy splendor of the grave
with the gathered spectral harvest of a hundred thousand ghosts                                                                        

- incinerated, vaporized, burned, & grotesquely disfigured
to the point-of-no-return of morbid caricature
 
Accusing me of a monstrously cultivated indifference
for when Guilt becomes omnipotence
all is Lost
 
Had I dared
to fly not only too close
to the Sun
but had I also
observed too meticulously,
and consequently learned far too much
like a beleaguered scholar of the damned 
Understanding far too deeply
with a sobering gravitas
its charismatic, uniquely heretical power
 
 
how we at Los Alamos
madly ,and relentlessly burned the midnight oil
as some kind of holy sacrament
all for the misbegotten creation of our
longed, and yearned for, beloved Monster
 
Our hideous misunderstanding
bouncing Calculus equations
off each other's let's melt the rules heads
with a frantic sputtering
of cognitive explosions
that would all too easily rival
and quite possibly surpass
if not certainly bewilder
the schizophrenic temperament of the Atom
 
 
As I began to feel
far too much
like that breathtaking science of growing dread
in Kurosawa's film-"Rashomon"
where all the Japanese ghosts
have a different story to tell
about their possessed undoing
 
 
Knowing that they would never be safe
from the clenched, form-fitting grip of an avenging demagogue
nor could I hope to escape
the massively dangerous fallout of guilt
that haunted my every waking moment
like  Nuclear foreshadowing
trailing me everywhere
like a vindictive stalker
 
Was I but a helpless pawn?
on the merciless strategic chessboard of His-story,
but an unwitting accomplice
as I dared to break open the Heavens
like the shell of a hermit crab,
to discern, and discover
hearing the mocking litany
of all its miserly secrets
in a self-fulfilling prophecy
 
& just what parceled-out Justice 
would be fair, and equitable
to be meted out, in a match your crime punishment
Should I be humbly chained to a rock
somehow fitting for an anchored slave of ambition
like a latter day Prometheus,
the impulsive Titan
with eagles as the cruel, and cunning emissaries 
sent on a daily basis,
to meticulously peck at the opportunist twist of my insides
 
All for daring
to bring
both the Divine, and the Satanic
rigged gift of orchestrated fire
down to the impulsive culpability of Man
like some deranged alchemist,
transforming Nightmare into history
 
- by Ron Marcus 

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