stain
he was speaking vodka,
a language that I all-too-well
understood
as I sat on the edge of his bed,
I handed him the joint
that I had just finished,
carefully rolling
he lit it and taking a small toke,
he became suddenly
and uncharacteristically
serious
“You do know that I’m not life, right?”
it must have been obvious that I had no clue
how to answer that
and so he continued…
“When I was just a little boy,
your grandpa (and mine) told me… he said,
‘Son, you’ll pull time
before you hit twenty’
At nineteen, I did six months”
before he could say another word,
several drunk people filed into the room
and the party took over,
just as if the writer had carefully placed it
into the script, for dramatic effect
about fifteen years later,
I stood in the yard
with my father,
one morning
we burned a mattress
in the yard
a mattress with a peculiar red stain
on the top end of it,
right about where a man
would lay his head down
to sleep
smoke climbed through the
bare tree branches,
coating the limbs,
blackening the sun,
giving twisted,
new meaning
to the wind
with each searing crackle,
each hot, little iron that launched out
from the flame,
the notion was solidified…
that you would not
be with us again
that red stain has been
forever removed,
taken off and away from
the bad blend of cotton
and synthetic fiber,
its ugly, lack of aesthetic,
removed from the eye
we have instead,
embroidered you,
into the heart
in gold-letter,
on satin
a little redirection,
a simple trick of the firelight
and of the mind
a touch of pre-approved
manipulation,
vocabulary and memory,
now twisted to suit ourselves
with semblances of sanity
and yourself, in a new suit…
one to bring you
over the threshold of the
next beginning,
in a dapper style
we have gathered many flowers
you were one,
and we gather more
still, we do so wish
that you were not so still
we seem to be so much
more careful now,
with our words
we never had to
monitor our tongues, before…
we counted on you,
to always say something deliciously profane,
hysterical, sublime…
something far more terrible
than we would ever manage (or dare)
to bring forth from our fearful mouths
you said it all for us,
being our favorite devil,
you spared no words,
knowing full well, that your time
was short
now, it has fallen serious and sullen
and ash settles on us,
stealing the still-warm seat
of smiles
we do our best
to preserve the integrity
of your memory
with all your words,
so clumsily wrong,
so horribly right
your faults fill volumes,
all of these now consumed by fire
and forgetfulness
we will not miss them
we are in fact,
glad to be free of these,
free from the weight of your awful acuity
your condemnation of this world,
was felt always, hot upon our necks,
virtually indecipherable
from the indiscriminate joy
that your voice poured out
over our wanting brains
we will not miss the anarchy of your actions,
nor your allegiance to an autocratic indifference
but beneath the
intolerable heavy,
knowing of nothing else to do…
we dutifully lift up our eyes
to the coming days
where you
are not
------
This is dedicated to the happy memories of Jevon Ward.
