We stumbled between trees, young & drunk,
hollers from home, convinced
the devil would emerge,
extending his hand, our tickets to immortality.
He never showed, & I’d wake, stormy-headed, Richard gone,
or I’d wake, Richard sprawled in the leaves,
cum on his pants, & I’d leave him there,
embarrassed to be my brother’s keeper.
Years later & for decades,
I ignored a voice faint but steadfast,
inconsequence hovering in boardrooms,
over million-dollar budgets & white-crowded tables,
that mix of vanity & discontent.
Richard married & divorced three times,
stalked a woman through Memphis & Birmingham,
shot five times in the stomach outside a massage parlor in Abilene.
These memories blast through me,
a current that shakes me in my boots,
this blood, this beat on loan. Nothing coheres,
details floating in weightless air, the restless void.
There are secrets I was born to tell,
though I’ve lacked the heart to speak
or failed to convert the words. Plus, no one
wants to hear about the last fair deal gone down,
how it was crooked from the get-go, this invisibility
I’ve spent a lifetime trying to deny, it’s like
killing shadows in the morning.
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