On Harold’s dying young
One
I came forty miles to see his face,
his jaw nibbled like the end of a pencil
his eyes drawn in, a small town sidewalk
with dark lawns squeaking of empty
porch swings
even the pain had abandoned him,
a natural lobotomy dumping him
face down on the living room floor
old ashes and cigarette butts
dog hair and urine,
bubbling like a drunk
(Those thousand nights
of stumbling home from village bars
had not prepared them for this)
He looked now like a baby
twisted onto one good side,
with all life yet to happen
his Republican past as limp as his arm,
all of it boiling in the tube of science
attached to his veins
preserving his suspended animation
indefinitely, his eyes last to numb, saying
He'd come farther than 40 miles to get here.
Two
He died at 6 p.m.,
clanging bells sounding
from the hospital chapel,
his son/lover leaping up the steps from the street,
phone still ringing in his head,
Harold calling for him to come
as if he would wake,
as if the harbinger would
give him one more moment alone
before stealing his soul,
after weeks in a coma,
after processions of brothers,
sisters, loves and friends,
after all the sad pronouncements of doctors
saying he'd never wake again,
the bell drawing his eyes open
for one precious moment
and his lips into a dying smile.
Three
His eyes were cold and empty,
a beach-head of dead shells
and hollow crab claws
abandoned by the gulls,
the cleft of his chin, the well,
from which water was drawn,
beach house and drooping porch,
crows-nest flag pole stuck
in the sand, and his hand
upon my shoulder, pressing
me for luck, as the nurses
wheeled him into the eye
of the hurricane.
Four
It is not the death bed
that takes you,
the brittle air of people
standing at your side,
wooden indians bearing
flowers instead of cigars,
the cancer of dying
in their eyes,
Blind and bitter children
cursing the moment of birth
Better still-born like your sister,
they say,
then to know these thoughts of you.
Carrion, swearing beneath their breath,
as you look up into their faces,
bloody-eyed, pillows propped high
behind your back
You with chronic cough
and perpetual pot of coffee,
you, who leaves us at the door
step to face that same fate
without you.
Five
Even two years later,
they still think of you,
as the man bubbling on the floor,
the excess of your horror movies
brewing inside your head,
Your lover, adopted son's soul
hunched over your dying eyes
like a slowly descending vulture,
asking after your health
as his fingers rifled your pockets
And me, that distant prodigal child
howling like a psychic dog,
feeling the moment
when the alcohol finally burned
the last bright cell from your brain,
knowing by heart the meaning of your passing,
knowing there would never be another
fuddled man like you.