Brandon

(Drugs only kill those who never realize their potential;
never take methodone, kids; and if you should choose to shoot
yourself, please do so cleanly and save us all the anguish)

I was watching that freestyle you recorded of yourself
wearing a dunce cap of your own fashioning, making fun of rapping,
and could not help but laugh a little at your exaggerated mannerisms.

You were always a child at heart-
late twenties prankster, faithful son,
beloved uncle, coveted nephew,
wise brother, trusted friend.

You showed me how the funniest people were often miserable,
and that they had to cloak their wounds with jokes.
And you had jokes for days.
For daze. And years.

I remember when your mother passed two septembers back,
knowing I couldn't stand swallowing a similar pill,
seeing how it had slit your throat from the inside,
as you seemed to choke on your own saline blood at the funeral,

trying to hold back, wanting so bad to let go.
Down that slippery slope,
some pangs are residual, still.

Over the summer I saw you had been taking it badly,
mostly with bumps to the head,
and a few downers every now and then.
Then you got into the hard shit,
which i neither condoned nor condemned,
but you could hear the brokenness in your songs.

Your sister in law said she and your nephew and niece
planted a Magnolia tree in their yard
so the kids could remember your smile every summer when it bloomed.

The saddest part is
you told us you would die just like you did-
chasing your dreams-
but none of us wanted to believe you.
Now it’s about to be summer and I just wanted you to know
that we still miss you down here.

you couldn't dream my dreams
and try to be normal

I miss my dogs

When I was 13 I held my dog as the vet euthanized her, trying to offer her some final comfort from her vital affliction. When I got home I dug a hole under an oak tree, and buried her in my backyard, fighting back tears all the while.

I realized we had received false information as soon as I kicked through the deadbolt, only to find the sights of my Beretta filled with a still absence where I had expected life. An immediate horror swept over my pervasive paranoia. I thought of you, behind the back door- waiting for a sign I never shot.
The sound of forced entry reminded me of the cacophony of death, the lock erupting with a singularly hopeless chime: The punctuated combustion of your Glock .45, followed by the foreign interjection of percussive uncertainties, then an infinite moment of distilled silence. I didn't need any visual reassurance; I knew what was waiting for me wherever I should find it. I followed a muffled scuffling coming from something rubbing against the floorboards.
The kitchen looked like genocide- crude wounds on lifeless bodies, a variety of bullet casings, blood running like red wine, all strewn about chaotic distortion of common objects. Then there you were- leaking out of your left leg and your right cheek, the latter just a few inches aside from humane extermination, sitting like a statue. You had been reduced from your larger than life persona, stooped in your own untimeliness.
Criminals don't die like they do in movies.
You showed no remorse, only a dissonant resignation. After realizing the other two were too dead to draw weapons, I knelt beside you, bowing my head, so as not to let you see me crying, unable to look at you until you spoke. You said something about a lottery ticket, tripping over the t's with a tattered tongue, trying to divert the inevitable. I grabbed the back of your neck and held you like a big baby, letting the blood pooling from your leg stain my favorite boots, as I desperately sought to construct some lasting asylum from this insanity.
I couldn't find the words. I just rested your chin on my shoulder. Then your body started convulsing. Your mouth fell open and a rattle resounded out of your throat, a cackle I had grown familiar with. I gripped you with all my might, as if I hoped to expedite the conclusion of your suffering, but the rattle still rolled until I felt your weight come down. Your eyes peered from behind a glazed inertia, as I drew your eyelids down and drug you to your Chrysler, to bury in the backyard of your childhood home.

Hendrix

Dear Jimi,

I really wish you would come back and teach these kids about living on the edge. Maybe you could play them a somber rendition of Little Wing and tell them about how, sometimes, when you bend the rules they can break you into a million effervescent shreds of subdued rebellion. I know you don't like to share some things though.
All I really want is for you to play like you did. Music doesn't feel the same any more Jim, not that I ever knew how it did. Nowadays everything is dead.
Give us a soundscape we can build generations on. Pick that guitar like a scab, until you bleed yourself over the fretboard, and women throw their underwear at your red hands. Sure, some kids might say you don't make sense, but they would be the same ones that have trouble following anything besides dance steps and synthetic snares.
Tell us how to listen Jim. Play us through lost lifetimes, until you lose your temporal disposition. Save us.

sincerely,
Matt.

p.s. do Biggie and Pac still biker over street cred?

I'm sure some of my classmates wonder why I always write sad poems,
so I will do my best to explain my disposition-

A life is a terrible thing to waste,
and watching young people being lowered into graves
like fragile pieces of trash makes you reevaluate a lot of things.

What means the world to you?
Is it just a stage for your vain actions,
whose repercussions you will fail to realize
until you stand at an altar thumbing a page
of postulations on the essential nature of fate?

I saw you in my sleep, the way I prefer to remember you:
before your innocuous eyes were colored with your own blood,
before you became a subject of my nightly prayers,
before you were disposed of.

That day,
when you realize how truly insignificant most of your worries are,
you may find yourself plagued with a chronic anguish.

So I told them that we were made to love each other,
as a shameless cascade of tears trailed down my face,
and that even when that love is vanquished
it's haunting recurrence will one day take us
to a consolation in some alien space.

I can't escape my self-imposed confinement,
so I just write on the walls,
page after page,
edifying chains.