I have ye to thank,
all ye actors and poets and marvels
(and DCs and everything in between)
for I have lived with ye, and amongst ye,
and ye have gently inspired genuine genius
in all ye holes in the wall
and all ye pens and strings and voices.

I thank you for the endless memories
of conversations of unnecessary furor and consuming hysteria
of brilliant surprises from elegant unknown talents
of tossed salad people and places and history and interaction
of a night lost in glowsticks but preserved in pictures
of a time my time in between periods of blank walls
of a blinding bolt forward in presence of mind.

For was it you
who told me about your grandfather
a man so brilliant that a mere conversation with the dean
at sixteen granted him admission to Columbia?
who told me of Canadian interlocutors
intimately engaged, only after your party had left?
who told me of amazing cliffside adventures
in education and nature's nomenclatures abound?
who discussed my heritage against that of a concrete world
of exploding dreams and collapsing stars at once,
where you take a bite but might get the proverbial worm?
or you, against that of a simple hicktown
where tractors run tandem with buicks in school lots?

Might it have been you
who watched with me psychedelic documentaries
and named canaries after variations of drug store medications?
who gallantly tolerated my most obnoxious outrageous disgusting
interesting unaffected out-of-their-mind friends?
who took me to absurd spots at absurd hours to breathe absurdity,
then churted we'd go, back the building we'd known?
who brought me in groups to feast on uncomfortable meats,
but between the awkward and networked gossip pipelines,
were enjoying the food and friends and flattery?
who drunk on dreams, droned on into darkness,
and dripped into ears of a man in his cave,
a man playfully perplexing you by pondering preposterous?

It must have been you
whose beautifully woven music reached my ears,
enveloped my being, seldom alone, and even when solo,
scattered brains with banter and brilliance combined...
who, with an open door and wide smile,
welcomed me to the mind's great opera house,
and gave audience to my own logical saga...
who in the weekend's weak end became crazy dazed amazings,
lazing in listless lack of activity, or senselessly celebrating
sins and kinship, all ways seeking erasure...
who gave me so many names against the grain,
jrosay or nerp or j or jackattack or just plain jack,
your classmate hallmate roommate or just plain friend...
who sat and sang and slew, dragons myths, moods,
and hit and clicked and ripped and spilt, toxins, guilt,
and hurt and failed and walked with me...


at least i hope it was you
you who paved platforms and bridges to raze amazing
and left vast caches of spectacular aptitude
or you who spread brilliance like plagues defined loosely,
grossly self-aware in great stares of embarrassed arrogance
and defeated demons crying freedom and bleeding love
you gave worlds great engravings, new meaning
to be me in new worlds new dreams new things
nooses spread shredded across mind fields
you lovingly led leaders over languid anguish
dangled carrotsticks and heritage bringing peace
you found you finding a place in space in winding time
under universal roofing aloof of stinking sewage
found a truth around music and beauty

shopping cart hearts that gather dust and poetry
blissful obituary tears splashing across my memory
loco rangers of brilliant oblivion armed with toothy news
slaying my molded upbringings refreshing genius

fair chance soul trade and daylong flatlines
double barreled shotgun roulette
blank charge buckshot
noisemakers both

that trigger
firing
you
?

Outside, the snow melts
beneath
my bare feet.
The air meets my breath
and turns to fog.
"Help me!"
I shout until
the world is spinning;
I'm spinning
downwards
and I can't
stop.

I'm lifted up
onto a cloud
and I'm floating away
from this earth.
My family is carrying me
back inside
to the safety of my house,
but not carrying me
away
from the explosion
of my mind.

The machines beeped
in time with my heart
which was getting
faster
by the minute.
It was actually
sending me messages
to leave this place.

The nurse took
my blood
but I don't even remember
the needle going in.

Too bad
they won't find
what's infected
my mind.

I.
Sirens ring out as warnings
amongst the patients of the ward.
Now the world will end in a firey
apocalypse. They've found me out
for the bad I am and now I must
suffer. I walk from room to room
looking for the grim reaper;
a nurse finds me
and tells me that the fire alarm
will be shut off soon.

II.
God is bringing me warnings
to never visit this place again.
She's an old lady and has been here
for a long time. The apocalypse
is coming sooner than I thought.

I.
The devil is right outside
my window.
I never knew he dressed
in all black.
He says hello
and I see the bag of mail
he's carrying.
The devil is not
a mailman.
What is my brain doing to me?

II.
Time to take my pills.
The nurse hands me
the cup.
The ******* one
will **** me.
"It's a vitamin,"
says the nurse.
"Nothing bad
is going to happen
to you."

We used to sit
in your bedroom
and climb onto the roof
after midnight, creating stories
for the constellations
that we sometimes drew—

The day we met—
you brought me cake
with the word “Happy”
in green icing;
how it filled the following years—

The drawings we made together,
hung on your walls;
Lego rocket ships
and video games
played until we
would watch the sunrise
from your rooftop—

Picking blueberries
with your mother,
our stained fingers,
the bag that burst
in the car;
the upholstery, soaked,
smelled of them for weeks—

That summer
we built a treehouse—
you fell off,
broke your arm,
and I wrote
of your Icarian shot at flight—

The camping trips—
the time we saw an eagle
land not three yards before us,
and the picture you drew
from memory that night—

The day you moved
to New Orleans—
we sat on your roof
the night before,
trading treasures:
my notebook of our stories;
your box of our drawings—

The letter you wrote,
eight months before
you left this world,
says you love the art
but hate the artists;
you once told me
“life is art,”
and sometimes I think
I know what you meant—

Now I wonder
if our constellations
befriended you,
and if you watch
with them and draw
pictures of me,
as I still write
stories of you.