oooooooooooo sad but true oooooooooooo

A relative with whom I flailed and sobbed
through my brother’s suicide has flown
three thousand miles to talk and not.  She and I. . .   
let’s just say one zigs where the other zags.
Thing is, we loved the man.  That I loved the boy
she did not know, that she loved the man I could not
is flour-and-water compared to the glue
he created when he made us laugh.   Still collapse.  
Students lined around the block for Bro
the prof’s famous antics.   Crazy like a fox.  
Manic in hand, could say.  Hand of course caught
in the wringer that was there all along.
Grabbed and mangled. . .    
 
Not saying does not keep Relative and I from seeing
ourselves trod red, green, yellow, purple lines  
of polyurethaned paint to a Lysol-smelling ward
again.  Buzz-buzz-click, follow the coats.   Shut  
your ears to bored and frantic squawks and clanks
of metal-backed charts.   Mutter  of  never  ending
medicosyllabic  dictation.   Hushed murmurs of shift-
drained nurses, aides, and  social workers.   Down
at the end a strait jacket with straps  being wrestled
on  by worked-out keepers.  New explosions, writhes
of confusion.  Pounds of feet racing to help subdue
a man we loved and feared for.  Feared.  Only
moments, but they debride skin already thin
Strip it off to dine on our marrow.  Love’s tenses
change.  Once more our bloodshot eyes  reflect long
jet hair and beard.  Wild brows, basketball face.
Ladies keeled when he was little.  Look at those roses.
Look at those dimples.   Again we fail  not to see
Father betray with too-same eyes.   Harumph
and trumpet.  Son should measure up!    Here
is my business card.  Remember I paid.
Want nothing but the best.  Try this number.
 
Silent pact binds Relative/I to an old familiar trail
watching rock slide.   It was just a matter of time.
Battles to stop loving, keep loving,  stop.  I/she
speak in tongues of the child he left.  Artist, brain.   
Fill gaps with the warmed-over mash families ladle.
Who does who/whom,   Shows, Pictionary, chess
moves, paperbacks, televised disaster.  Cut to real time:  
Out front, a doe bats away a faun too old to nurse.  
We trade awkward gawks. This Relative is a down-
to-tacks straightener.    I build castles in the air
so they can leak and crack   Mold molds. Chains rattle
in dungeons as Rapunzel weeps in a tower.
Webs spider.   Not enough duct tape to blind her either
to the reflections in each others’ eyes.  Impossible lashes.
Dante’s Inferno leer.  Scars and an  egg-sized blister
hid an instep,  next to last attempt.  “Gas will do
that.”   Not talking not enough.    Time is your flight
 
 
(c)  Phyllis Jean Green,  October, 2005