I've spoken to my brother
It sure had been a while

I've spoken to my brother
Using cards from a pile

He gave me a little pick me up
He told me I should have more fun

But Mischief and Mayhem were long gone
When the springs of his clock had sprung

He recognized this and came with advice
"The memory of my mighty leap is dead weight in life"

He said so and I replied thus
bro what the ****

He reads me like a book
Every page he writes
I’m astonished every time
I hide in a maze
Confused of my time
Confused of details I have shown
And what I’ve shown not
Those of hidden disguise
He finds
And so I question what he knows
I treat it as fools gold
Because knowing me is not that easy
But yet still today
It’s easy to him…

A walk around the block in my parents’ neighborhood at dawn
wearing mom’s sweater and pop's sneakers with a clown hole cut out for  
      toe infection
I was stopped by a cop in a cruiser
this was during the Vietnam War long hair ago
he was angry at everyone I was offended by everything
he said which way are you going I said which way are you going
so he socked me in the mouth and handcuffed me
I was arraigned on disorderly conduct and resisting arrest
my good parents came down and stood beside me before the judge
I wrote to the police department internal affairs
not for retribution but to start a paper trail
in case this cop someday bopped one of my brothers
a few months later I’m back at work in NYC
two detectives come into the city to question me
one good cop one bad cop we park in the park me in the back seat
they wanna know was I mouthy to the cop who punched me in the mouth
long story short
they leave me on a bench to eat my lunch and the charges are dropped

[do you have a suggestion?]

my brother pauses, turning to me;
"because you're full of great suggestions,
but you always say them too late."

he means no harm by it,
yet how do i put a name to this silence?
shutting up in compliance?

       —i shoved cotton down my throat,
       now i can't breathe—

when did the echo become louder than the scream?
maybe it was vegas, twenty-nineteen.
maybe I was never allowed to dream.

how do i speak my voice back into existence then,
when i can no longer remember its sound?
whispers, snuffed out so many times i've lost count.

[i forget.]

I remember nothing of my childhood.
I just remember red. I
remember mum crying in my arms when i was 8.
I remember you- not a lot.
I only remember those last moments.
The ***** running down your legs. I remember the knot on the bed but not your face.
I remember becoming the family therapist after that. I remember all the times I had to grow up before I was 10.
I remember what was suppose to be my childhood.
But I never got to have one.
Once our sister was old enough to remember I wanted to save her but now when i look at her and what she does I'm sure I failed her too. But someone who is 10 should not be raising her sister.
She grew up never knowing you.
I grew up even faster after losing you.
It's selfish i know to want you here to take some of the responsibility away from me. So that I don't have to deal with mums stress seizures alone. Or raising our sister. Because if you were here we would have a childhood.
And i could lean on you, just like you could have always leaned on me. I wish you were still alive.
you are the only other person has has gone through loosing her too. But you instead saw what she did as a lesson to learn not something to avoid, I hate you for killing yourself when I needed you the most. I hate you for not ******* talking to me and leaning on me. but we were kids. you never got to grow up. So I did it for both of us and started early.
I can't really remember my childhood.
And could really use the memory of ours right about now.
Even if it never happened.

We were a trio.
Gone together,
mentally alone.

90's alternative had been playing for maybe
three-quarters of an hour, and at this point
we were all mostly toasted.
A shot of beer a minute.

Talking ****, shuffling the deck.

Nick laughed, Luke mocked.
I cheered them both on.
In that moment we all lived in the golden light
of youthful ignorance and concrete friendship
that can only be fully grasped by a drunken trio of guys
in their mid-twenties at 2:00 AM on an idle Thursday night.

We all cracked fresh cold ones and lit up fresh cigs,
and I raised the burning tobacco in a toast:
"To friendship!"

Luke matched my pose, left arm outstretched.
We caught each other's eyes, and without missing a beat
his right hand plunged the cherry into his left forearm.
I looked down and saw myself doing the same,
yet felt no pain. We stayed that way until our embers died,
and relit the remaining smoke off of a shared flame.
Nick never matched our level of commitment,
I doubt he even bears a scar these days.
My scar still itches from time to time.
I wonder if Lukes does, too.

Eventually
I started seeing tunnels
and soon, gravity took me.
Horizontality was my fate.
I was the first to fall,
the first to succumb to gratuitous consumption.

...

Birds chirping, deafening in the late morning.
The angry sun cast slotted beams
through the still-lingering twines
of cigarette smoke from the night before.
I watched it slowly twirl and stir through slitted eyelids.
My eyes hurt, and my neck creaked as I looked around.
Nick passed out beside me, I figured Luke got the top bunk.
In the daylight I could always see the apartment for what
it really was.
An escape.
One room, bunk beds, and abject emotional destitution.
I rolled over on to the floor and steadied myself with
closed eyes and a palm planted on the ***** carpets.
My phone was on the desk in the corner, I grabbed it
and headed towards the bathroom.

**** cascaded, and through the open bathroom window
I could hear it echo off of the buildings lining New Street.
My hand floated up to the back of my head
and picked at something. Something hardened.
There was a thick layer of something
on the back of my scalp,
down the back of my neck.
It felt like wax.
We were burning a candle last night.
They must've dumped it on me
since I was the first to fall asleep.
I quit picking when I was struck by a sharp pain in my arm,
my left forearm.
A bit of my hair had probed an open wound,
a round burn mark.
I sat down on the floor and remembered for a bit.

My phone turned on with a melodic series of beeps,
it had been awhile since I turned it on.

One new voicemail.

I dialed the number 1 while picking wax from my hair,
put my passcode in,
and listened.

Mom called me last night, she was crying.
I was used to that sound at this point.
"Otis wont get up, I think he's dying Justin."
A brief pause.
"Please come home."






I'm sorry Otis. I loved you.
More than a dog, you were a canine brother.
Raised alongside me.
Raised by the same parents.

I didn't come home,
at least,
not then.

I cried at Field of Dreams.
It wasn't Dad I was thinking of --
it was you --
us, lobbing that ball
back and forth.
  
You blossomed:      Specht Fans 11 …  Tuesday night.
Fireballer Bob Specht struck out 11 and allowed only two hits in leading the BPO Elks to a 4-0 victory over Lee Plumbing.

You were ten.

You threw so hard
my hand burned even with a catcher's mitt and sponge.
  
You stalled;
others caught you.
Age fifteen, and your career was done.
  
You were musical;
played trombone in the marching band.
  
School? You did well,
but were never really exceptional.
You defied conventions,
went to extremes.
  
In college, it wasn't enough to just protest;
you had to join the SDS,
to always be daring the police to arrest you.
  
You took ******, mescaline, speed, *******.
  
You were cynical, negative, moody;
scorned all masks and indirection.
What you offered was a ruthless honesty:
in a fake and superficial world,
no small commodity.
You married --
Justice of the Peace, no friends or family.
Seemed happier.
It didn't last;
you divorced.
  
Talked of suicide, occasionally.
I argued it to be a misunderstanding
of emotions' relativity:
Only the starving understand
the exquisite flavor of plain bread.
  
You wandered.
Work took us farther apart.

You became obsessed with a married woman
who had no intention of leaving her husband.
  
Injured your eye in a car accident.
The doctor prescribed corticosteroids.
  
I fell in love and got married.
You were best man.
  
And then:
P.M., May 20, 1981: A body was discovered in the kitchen of the second floor apartment at 68 High St. by the building's owner, Joseph Albertson. Mr. Albertson positively identified the body as that of Robert Edward Specht, the apartment's leasee.  The deceased had received a gunshot wound to the head. A .25-caliber Beretta revolver registered to the deceased was found one foot from the body. The substantial damage to the face and head, consistent with a very close firing range, the lack of any signs of intrusion or struggle, and the written materials (identified as being in Mr. Specht's handwriting) found next to the body, indicate that the wound was self-inflicted.

You'd left a note: "No hope of finding love. Refuse to live without."

Was it the accident, the drugs
that made you less communicative?
My marriage? Some inner-driven change?
  
Would that I could have eased your pain.
You were thirty-one.