Behind the Poem: ₈₂Pb :: Head like a Hole^{{I’d rather die—}}

Rosebud Ben-Oni, author of the poem “82Pb :: Head like a Hole{i'd rather die—}” from Issue 74.1-2, introduces her readers to Plumbum, the element that animates her Atomic Sonnet with its propensity for destruction and an affinity for Nine Inch Nails.

Call me Plumbum. That’s all I ask. (Though if you’re nasty, it's 82 to the Pb to the density of 11.34 g/m3! ) Welcome to your Worst TechoNightmare of Terrible Lies. There’s going to be a lot of NIИ (that’s short for Nine Inch Nails) references here. I’ve been asked to explain myself. Or rather, the poet who originally wrote her Atomic Sonnet about me is overwhelmed right now. Seems she’s busy jumping timelines to escape a biopsy result and subsequent infection. And to that I said: Poet, it sounds like you’re in a Downward Spiral—and that’s perfect for me!

So welcome to a real EBM Horror Clangor of a “Behind the Poem.” Call me Plumbum. I prefer it to my other elemental (and deathly boring) name Lead. The monotony of the monosyllabic does not suit me. Don’t believe all the bad things you’ve heard about me. I’m so much worse. I have a terrific sense of humor—just one detrimental to your senses. I’m what you’d call sheer heavy metal. The exemplar of a Pretty Hate Machine (that’s another NIИ reference), and my lead-acid batteries (excuse me, my plumbummin’ beats) electrify the dull angst, the gritty grunge, in the Industrial of your lives. Sure, copper and aluminum are better electrical conductors, but who else on the periodic table is a cross between Trevor Reznik in The Machinist and Henry Spencer in Eraserhead? Biologically speaking, I will make you hurt. To see if you still feel so you’ll focus on the pain, my sweetest friend. Pain is my attempt at flirtation and courtship. Specifically: numbness and neuropathy!

But in case you all are getting your wires crossed (wires which might also contain me), I’m not the reason why the Poet in Question decided to jump timelines. I did not cause her waterworks. No Plumbum in this plumbing. (But just in case, I’ll also say: Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up. My Buttercup.) In fact, I’d like to state for the record that it was the Poet who gave me the charming title “Head like a Hole”—and then gets annoyed when I call her my Buttercup Ben-Oni. Or baby. I’m a sucker for sweet talk. Who wouldn’t rather plumbum (yes, I verbed myself) than give them control? Just ask the Ancient Romans. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. You see I have a penchant for how empires burn in a steady systematic decline(NIИ!). Talk about waterworks. Scholars from the Middle Ages say I allegedly played a key role in the downfall of the Roman Empire. Lead poisoning, they claim, from lead pipes. Yet I’d like to point out that those same scholars used the word saturnine to describe the ill. After the Father of the Gods, Saturn. No one said divinity is an easy path. Should be thanking me, really. In Ancient Rome, I was the Maximus Decimus Meridius of All Metals, my presence welcomed and widespread! Still, I prefer alchemists. I was their darling. For centuries, they attempted to transmute me into gold. “A crackpot investment,” the Poet wrote, “to the point of no return.” So much fatal flattery in her Atomic Sonnet about me! “World’s Worst” was my favorite. My sonnet is an ode, really. The whole reason the Poet started the Atomic Sonnets series was to celebrate the periodic table’s 150th birthday in 2019 but also to push the existing boundaries of both chemistry and poetic forms. She’ll never say kill your darlings. Rather, unleash them upon your imagination (and who better than me?). She herself loves to poke holes in seemingly concrete, opaque systems, be they literary or scientific. Show how nothing’s forever. Nothing’s certain. She never met a foundation (or empire) she didn’t like to crack. You can imagine how much I welcomed all of this! High poisonous praise, that she compares me to “a man who’d rather start a war / than admit he’s wrong.” Buttering me up, my Buttercup? Well, I’m a darling you won’t ever kill, my sweetest friend—

So, I can’t help but feel some of you might think I’m the reason for the Poet’s flight from this timeline. Well, I don’t mean to talk about her behind her back, but she’s done this before, this whole jumping timelines business. It began last year when she wrote about the element Titanium for AGNI. She took the can-do-no-wrong, o-so-strong, mighty and magnificent Titanium and called it her stupid little lesion lucky charm. Even named it Aurora, her bad, bad girl titanium marker. T gets a heavenly name like Aurora, and I get World’s Worst! Unlike Titanium who’s soooooo helpful and valued yet has to earn a place in her body, I don’t require pre-authorization. In fact, I’m probably already in most, if not all, of your bodies. She writes that I’m “lifelong” and you’re “never getting rid of me”—but does that not also make me dependable? A source of reliance and loyalty? And yet the Poet calls me a “cuckoo” in my Atomic Sonnet because she believes I have an especially nasty way of supplanting other essential metals in our bodies. Like Iron and Zinc. Again, with these easy-praise periodic elements! Again, with measuring my essentialness in only human terms! Sure, there’s no safe level to be measured of me in the body. You just have to accept I’m part of your lives and live with it. If you’re searching for wisdom or a lesson to be taken away here, you won’t find it. (Only lead-ends if you’re nasty). So, you wouldn’t find any humanity in me, but you’ll definitely find me in humanity.

And furthermore, while Ms. Buttercup Jumping Timelines Ben-Oni proceeds to await her further results post biopsy, all the while battling a nasty infection, I’d like to state again, for the record, it wasn’t me who caused her radial scarring, her pseudoangiomatous stromal hyperplasia, her architectural distortion (though what a wickedly delicious term!), and other uncertain pathology that has now led her to a surgeon because they can’t rule out malignancy. They did tell her that her body has proven its ability to make abnormal cells. And you—yeah, now I’m addressing you, Ms. “don’t you dare talk to my dear editor Chase” Ben-Oni—you can’t deny that at least I showed up when you couldn’t, to plumbum Behind This Poem, didn’t I? At least I’m present, as they say.

I’ve been here this entire time, with your second little titanium maker now in its place, your ever-growing collection of suspicious lesion lucky charms. The radiologist explained your very complex pathology, even noting you’ve put in quite a few formal requests to jump timelines. I was there when loved ones kept calling, waiting to know the results, and you kept your voice an even tempo. I was there for all the courses of antibiotics you’re now on to fight infection. And I held my tongue when you said somewhere in the darkness of a fully lit hospital room: If I could fix myself, I’d...

My favorite Nine Inch Nails quote.

Because in the song, Trent Reznor doesn’t finish and...

I understand humanity better than you think, Poet. I’m its challenges and upheavals that you will never escape and must live with. You’ll never completely understand why I am the way I am as you’ll never completely understand the whole of the universe, and isn’t that what a periodic element should symbolize? A marker of limitations but also a marker you must try and try to overcome, nonetheless? Isn’t that a way to evolve? I am, above all, about holes in the head as much as how you choose to deal with them. My discovery (I know how fond you are of that term, my Buttercup) has never been allotted to a single individual. I even cameoed in Exodus. Can your beloved Titanium say that? So what if my whole existence is flawed? Is this not evidence that in some messed up way I get you closer to God? (My second favorite Nine Inch Nails quote!) And even then, my credits allegedly roll back even further to 8000 BCE. Or is it 6400 BCE? Just exactly when humans discovered—ah! that word again—is so inconclusive, just like your biopsy results, My Buttercup Ben-Oni. And how humans have used me. My perspicacity, my persistence, my aplomb, your dearest, deadliest Plumbum!

And, yes, I was there when all of your health troubles began, during your first MRI so long ago now, when they asked you if you were allergic to my elemental sister Gadolinium. How could you have known? Who has Gadolinium just sitting around at home? When they listed possible allergic reactions, what else could you say but cool, cool, sounds good. Thinking if you had any reactions during the procedure, you’d just notify the technician.

Only it was a brain and spine MRI...

And you were in a head cage and couldn’t move and....

And very quickly found out you were indeed allergic AF. There’s goblins in my contrast, you’d gasped, and that worked itself into the title of your Atomic Sonnet for dear Gadolinium. I was quite amazed you still attempted to vomit without being able to sit up. I’m not going to take credit for your survival instinct kicking in at that moment. But perhaps it’s the many difficulties you’ve faced in your life that keep your mind sharp even when they also seem to attack it (biologically speaking, and again, wasn’t me).

So I know you’re scared, Poet. Two biopsies in a year’s time, with many a mammogram and ultrasound, and they still can’t rule out what shall not be named, least of all by me. There’s just one thing I ask of you.

Admit that fear.

Admit it out loud. All of it. Every thread of its strange, white, glowing web like your own architectural distortion. Channel your inner plumbum (you know I’m there any way). Then consider this: so what if they say your body creates abnormal cells? I say call it the very mischief and mayhem you’re always writing about. Your body and its obstinate, tangled pathology—the cracks in your own foundation, Poet—will inform other research in the future. I’ll even help you jump a timeline (or seven, eight, NIИ)) to keep the party going. That’s right, Poet. Now you’ve got me talking about being beneficial. I have my moments. I do block and absorb radiation, but let’s not focus on that. I have a certain historical infamy to uphold.

And moreover, I’m here to stay. Even when you jump timelines and still have to make that follow-up appointment in the next. I’m here to remind you that during that very first MRI, they asked what kind of music you’d like to play during the procedure. And of all things, you requested Nine. Inch. Nails. Oh, you did. So buck up, Buttercup. Don’t forget you made the conscious choice to have my future title blaring in the MRI because why be stuck inside a machine that sounds like a supersonic, sci-fi wrecking ball and not request “Head Like a Hole”? Live your days and nights raging against fear and uncertainty, pushing boundaries where even the World's Worst and a real good-for-nothing like me gets a sonnet-ode with a volta full of antisong. I won’t be lead, and neither will you. Go on then and leap. We’re all coming along, your Gadolinium goblins and Aurora and your other yet-unnamed stupid little lesion lucky charm.

One last fun fact: I am your sweetest friend since of all the elemental salts, mine can taste like sugar. So call me Dessert, call me Deady. Call me Plumbum. Yes, I am the Problem. The Sickly Sweet Supplanter who science itself would like to see overthrown, once and for all.

And baby, I’d love to see you try.