When you were a little boy
They would lay you to sleep
With small prayers and a leap of faith,
Your angel-blonde eyelashes barely touching
And you would stop breathing periodically,
Gasping into the void,
Creating sounds that would echo against the cacophonous
Tomb of your mind for the rest of your life.
I hear your screams reverberate
In every instance of a Swedish accent.
I guess you were lucky enough
To be pronounced Dead three times.

Of course you'd call it an ice skating accident;
Ever the man, ever the glowing effigy of strength,
How could you bring yourself to tell us how you'd been mangled,
Beaten so badly that your organs broke and bled,
Your ten year old knees
Kissing the carpet of your mother's living room
As you fell and died that first time?
You'd later tell stories about the progression of death,
Colors enrapturing you,
Everything dipped in blue.
There were levels to this,
You said,
And you'd stuck your skin into one that no mortal could have
And yet you returned to us.

Nothing about this poem
Is going to make you seem more evil
Than the vision you've already placed in people's minds.
Thin, pale hands tossing a severed pig's head into an audience,
Those same fingers tracing the path of a jagged bottle blade
Down your arm in a business motion;
Pelle, I'd write an ode to every scar on your arm
If I wasn't sure that you'd already done it.
A heart corpse painted as black as the inside of a closed casket,
Your closed casket,
What was it that ruined you?
What was the trigger that pulled itself
Besides the so obvious one?
A broken kid from a broken home,
What made you run so far away
Only to hide in the arms of those who
Let you parade your mental illness like a banner,
Let you wear your delusions like a cape around your neck?
Who let you climb to the roof
Just so they could cheer for you to jump
With your fantasies and shredded silk hair flying behind you
Before your bones crumbled against each other in skin
Too tender and frail to contain you?

When they talked about you in magazines
Writers were always lamenting the tragedy
Of your cut-glass jaw and your piercing eyes,
Masculine beauty of such a caliber
Wasted on a character so evil and vile
It might as well have blotted itself out against the sun.
What you thought you were
Doesn't define your worth.
You're so much more than a corpse on a bed,
A couple of necklaces made from your bones.
You are so much more than a voice that was
Throttled out of existence by its own hand,
So much more than a statement piece.

For years after your death
Your family would receive packages for you in the mail
From bookstores around the world,
Tomes of witchcraft and ancient magics,
Spells designed to enchant and bewitch,
Pelle, were you trying to necromance the Dead?
Were you trying to take the parts of you
That felt less than human out?

If I could talk to you,
If I could say one thing,
It would have been what I've told
A dozen friends who've jumped in front of trains,
Called me from mental hospitals,
Called me with guns and knives in their hands.
I wish I could have told you
To wait one more ******* day.
In one more ******* day your father would have called.
You might have had a ticket back home.
You might not have a strike through your name
On every online page referencing your work.

The screaming may have stopped,
The air raid sirens in your head might have dulled
To the point where you wouldn't have felt the need
To blow them away.

If you didn't feel human,
If you felt like this was all a dream and that you'd wake up soon,
Why are we still living in the remnants of your nightmare?

"---I think...
        that every deep thinker is
            more afraid of being understood
                      than of being misunderstood.---"

is it possible to erase feelings of inadequacy
by overcompensating productivity
will it silence my self doubt
until exhaustion takes over

A posthumous letter came today:
My Dear Brother Fran;
I assume it began;
Your Loving Brother Sean.
It ends.
I'll never read those lines;
I know what's down between his lines;
His words and thoughts would break me.
His ink would stain my hands;
Leached through lines with real tears,
Dropping like time's sands.

He'd wax on our youthful days,
Wane on years we let slip past;
I don't need to read the words,
You know all things must pass.

I'll not sit to read his letter.

I'll recall how we were before,
When he was six and I was four,
Skating on the basement floor,
Or sliding down the new clothes line,
As pennants waving in the wind.

He taught me much of what he knew,
Just doing what big brothers do.
And always had my back.

I don't recall, but I'm pretty sure
We had our dumb-*** quarrels;
But I remember hitting *****,
Kicking, catching, throwing curves,
Rackets, sticks, clubs and bats,
Our cruel crew cuts beneath our hats.

He raised my game in everything;
Said I could do anything.
I'll remember his glance in the mirror
Going out the door.

If I ever read that letter,
I surely would regret forever,
Miss saying, I Love You too.

No, I'll never need to read his letter,
To remember Sean in his prime;
To recall the days when we two shined.

Lace the blades, Sean.
I'll be fine.

it is meant to be
give and take
not
push and pull

the effort
should not be
the struggle

most of us are lonely

I thought

we’ve been    through it all

but you            threw it all

 away.

-

nothing is left
                             now but
  
my broken pieces

I'm stronger than you think, you know.

I will bloom despite the snow.