I am the age at which you died
no comely pictures immortalize me,
though I am not washed white with time
like you

a lone silver streak stripes my chin

many would say
you were too sensitive for this world
thus rushing your years
and guiding the barrel to your mouth

I would pit my pain
against your Nobel torments any day
if such things be a contest,
what is not, though
a rabid race to the grave?

but who would really win?
for your mother’s madness did not leave you
skittering around like a cat on a hot tin roof
and your father’s anvil hands
did not leave scarlet letters
on your skinny legs

excuse me then, if I don’t
grant you a capital letter in your name
excuse me if I don’t applaud your time in the ring
or say bravo to the iconoclast
for your sparse use of words
(though, “for sale, baby shoes, never worn” was…perfect)
excuse me if I don’t think your readable feasts
should be on everyman’s menu

you were but a man
who drank and ate and fought and ******
until you could no more and decided there was nothing left
I respect your triggered choice and do not call it craven
but janitors aren’t made legends
they just clean your brains
from the floor

I witness
the marching armies,
some trudging through the sludge of slaughter,
some gliding as if on polished glass  
others flying on sympathetic currents  
few faithfully, but ALL fatefully, moving
onward, to the deep sleep      

like a mute director in life’s one act play
I watch many in their final moments
some in stillness so sweet
my camera gently weeps ( though not I)  
others I record being ripped apart
in metal madness, yet
I don’t blink an eye
even while wiping the
blood from my hands        

you, Robert, music maker at heart,
meat cutter by trade, scored my lens  
leaving it forever altered
I knew you, a year younger than I,
I saw you, beaten down  
by the grave gravity
we cherish yet dread,
you, trudging through
the slaughter, one  
of the harshly humbled,
you, found the right rope  
and your wife found you
on a Sunday morning,
hanging
in the garage,
your letter to the world the clang
of the alarm that woke her  
and hastened her slow march
to the church, where other directors
took over the filming, and  
closed the curtain, after
the final choking act  

I cannot miss you  
I,
(who only wistfully recall
the millions of marchers near and far)  
felt your Sunday sojourn  
**** the air from my lungs
I can only be grateful  
your living and dying  
made me feel
the palled pain
and undying dread