Gabriel (4 page)

Because everyone needs a good beer

Especially the guy on the ventilator

And the nurses who work too hard

He said the countryside

Made him feel nervous he wanted

A twenty-four-hour kind of city

He woke me up at two a.m.

To take a walk he needed to talk

Laurie pulled me back into bed

He had flat feet and an awkward gait

He didn’t like to dance he liked

To go to raves and chill with friends

He couldn’t pay attention

But his meds made him feel sleepy

And he sold them to college kids

He liked to kick back and remember

The time we were riding home

In a taxicab on the West Side Highway

And my mother offered to take him

To a strip club for his twenty-first birthday

What’s wrong with that
she wanted to know

Why they couldn’t celebrate together

That’s just what you want
he bellowed

Going for a lap dance with Grandma

He liked to kick back and declare

He wanted to track down his birth mother

To see if he really had Celtic blood

He liked to kick back and tell my family

About the time he saw an American Hasidic

Jewish reggae musician at Hampshire College

He saw Nicholas Cage going up an escalator

In a movie theater and turned to his friends

I hate Nicholas Cage he has such a big head

He liked to kick back and tell us

How much he liked weed and ’shrooms

How bad could it be for you
he said

It comes out of the ground

He liked to kick back and roll a spliff

With his friends at night

He always liked to go higher and higher

We’re here
he’d say lifting his hand

To the middle of his chest

But we need to go here

He continued on

And raised his hand up to his neck

Friedrich Rückert wrote 425 poems

After his two youngest children

Died from scarlet fever

Within sixteen days of each other

In 1833 and 1834 he could not cope

And often thought they had gone out

For a while
they’ll be home soon

He told himself to tell his wife

They’re only taking a long walk

Mahler scored five of those poems

In 1901 and 1904 for a vocalist

And an orchestra to break your heart

As soon as I heard the plaintive oboe

And the descending movement of the horn

And the lyric baritone entering

I felt I should not be listening

To Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing

Kindertotenlieder
with the Berlin Philharmonic

Mahler’s wife was superstitious

And thought he was chancing disaster

With
Songs on the Death of Children

Now the sun wants to rise so brightly

As if nothing terrible had happened overnight

The tragedy happened to me alone

Mahler knew he could never have written them

After his four-year-old daughter died

From scarlet fever three years later

He said he felt sorry for himself

That he needed to write these songs

And for the world that would listen to them

Mallarmé was left in fragments

And could not right it

After his adored Anatole

His exquisite second born

His future prospects

A celestial soul

Succumbed to rheumatic fever

Treacherous blow of death

Ridiculous enemy

Ailing in springtime

Mourned in winter

His eight-year-old was lodged

In a little cemetery

Overlooking the Seine

Where skaters glided by at Christmas

And barges froze in the canals

And the moon eclipsed

His future projects

Hugo could speak of his daughter’s death

Hugo was happy to be able to speak

Of his daughter’s death

But it was impossible for Mallarmé

Though year after year

He labored at a tomb for Anatole

Which he could never complete

An immortality made human

An offering to the absolute

With his son

Transposed by death

Mallarmé was left with fragments

He came by my office for cash

Every Monday Wednesday and Friday

I was good for thirty bucks a pop sometimes more

You only drop by when you want your money

I said but he protested
it’s not like that Dad

He didn’t like to think of himself that way

I was usually working at the computer

When he strolled in

Dad you’re the sort of person

Who needs to work a lot

I’m the sort of person

Who needs a lot of down time

He wasn’t doing anything all day long

He just slept in and hung with his friends

And so I tried to convince him to volunteer

For an organization he was contemptuous

He thought volunteering was for stooges

He didn’t like charities either

He told his friends he had once

Attended a six-month training program

In audio production at EWF

He had some skills using Pro Tools

And Reason software he had major skills

In DJing and music production

He told my friends he was going back to school

To finish up his degree in marketing

At the University of Massachusetts

He just needed a few more credits

To collect his diploma

Maybe next summer

From the playbook

Say you get caught lifting eighty bucks

Out of your dad’s wallet or your mom’s purse

Simply deny it deny everything

Never take responsibility for what

You could not possibly have done

The strategy for getting what you want

When you want it is simple

Never take
no
for an answer

Pump up the volume

Remember that
no
is not an option

It is just a temporary setback

He wanted us to buy him a bicycle

So he could deliver specialty donuts and ice cream

Concoctions at night in Hell’s Kitchen

It was a scheme we refused

He found an old girl’s bicycle on the side

Of the street and fixed it up for twenty bucks

Take that parents

He never used the bike because the shop

Didn’t bother to call him back Janet still has it

He was determined to get his own apartment

And certain that epilepsy qualified him

For a free apartment from the city

Otherwise he could move in with Tamar

Her dad would get her an apartment as soon

As she went back to school full time

He was finally accepted for Job Path

He could make some real dough at last

And get an apartment after Labor Day

I stood at the damaged site

Across the street from my house

And watched a steel ball

Crashing into the homeless shelter

Abandoned on Dean Street

All the people scattered

It takes tremendous force

To weaken a building

And turn bricks into rubble

It doesn’t take long

The crane swung around

And pitched the heavy ball

Into the guts of the structure

Holding its side

Like a wounded veteran

The hard hats gathered

To watch the pendulum swing

Into the concrete body

Of a building slated for demolition

So there could be progress

I was against the project

And riveted to the wreckage

Time and again the fighter wavered

And finally collapsed

I did not stay to see the building

Broken down into debris

And then carted away

Some nights I could not tell

If he was the wrecking ball

Or the building it crashed into

It’s the way he roared into the house

And started to rant

Against those he did not like

Rude waiters who charged him extra

For stuff he ordered too much

On a whim his appetite vanished

He did not like certain cousins

Preppies fake bohemians in the Village

Spoiled Amherst students
Mass-holes

Especially bugged him

Social workers he did not like

Men in tight leggings feminists

Do you even know what a feminist is

Laurie asked him he did not

Like hairy-armed lesbians kissing

On the street in Northampton

All right all right that’s enough now

I said it was hard to calm him down

Once he started to rail

Against boy bands or Hasidic Jews

Or boarding schools those hellholes

Models and snobs annoyed him

He didn’t have much use

For bullies or honor students

Don’t be a hater
his friends said

Don’t drink a pitcher of Haterade

But he just laughed

And continued the blast

His parents did not escape his wrath

I wonder if he forgave us

Laurie and I looked around

Jittery and shaken the after-draft

Was like drinking a pot of coffee

And then trying to sleep

It was impossible

To keep track of him at all hours

He spent whatever money he had

Whenever he had it spendthrift gambler

I could never stay mad at him for long

He just shrugged his shoulders

And laughed helplessly

I couldn’t help it I had to Dad

He wasn’t made for a world

Of checkbooks and savings accounts

Stockbrokers investment bankers

Charlie called him
a Clown of God

He wasn’t
a Monster of Subtlety

Like the two of us

He would try anything once he hazarded

He was sometimes scared

He was never scared enough

Of scoundrels and drug dealers

He thought teachers and supervisors

And psychiatrists were the enemy

Policemen riled him he had rights

A lover a posse of friends

No one could restrain him

King of the Sudden Impulse

Lord of the Torrent

Emperor of the Impetuous

He breezed into the office

With his girlfriend and hit me up

For extra money because of the storm

Pounding across the Atlantic Ocean

He was heading to the store to buy food

So they wouldn’t starve to death ha ha

Love you
he coughed and kissed me

See you next week
he was out

The door like a thousand other times

Some people were nervous others festive

When we closed for the day

And told everyone to buy supplies

Is this the apocalypse line

Somebody asked the disorderly crowd

Outside the hardware store on First Avenue

The apocalypse line was getting longer

We should forget about power downtown

The spokesman for Con Ed said

When Hurricane Irene hit North Carolina

And started to churn up the East Coast

The city decided to evacuate

370,000 people from the low-lying areas

Of Manhattan my friends in Zone A

Boarded their windows and stormed out

On the local news I watched some idiots

Sitting on the beach and working

On their tans in Asbury Park

Here comes Irene bearing down on us

It’s time to get out

Of the apocalypse line

He left the house during a rainstorm

Almost impulsively

He rushed out headlong into the night

While everyone else hunkered down

With flashlights and batteries

The city on high alert

The subways closing down

Stay home
the mayor said

And only go out in an emergency

But he left the house during a rainstorm

And never came home

Where was he going in such a hurry

It was almost as if the hurricane

Swept him away in a flood

Swarming over the banks

He left the house

And headed to another town

We had no idea where he had gone

He was a secret

We could not decipher

And no one would help us find him

We called to report him missing

No one would help us find him

For four days and four nights

We tried desperately to track him down

The hurricane carried him away

He rushed out headlong into the night

And I never saw him alive again

Most reckless of reckless angels

Who left the house during a rainstorm

I was at home in Brooklyn

Working on a lyric

About the troubadours

When he left the apartment

On the Upper West Side

Looking for an adventure

I was reading the eleven poems

Of Guilhem IX Duke of Aquitane

The earliest troubadour

When he left his girlfriend

And his mother at home

To meet a friend for a drink

He said he would be home soon

Don’t worry about anything

He texted Tamar

I didn’t know he had gone out

In the rain it was raining steadily

I was at home in Brooklyn working

On a simple poem about nothing

A troubadour song

How nothing came to me

When he took the train to Jersey City

If that’s how he got there

I thought he was at home

While I worked on a song

About nothing

And then went to sleep

Without knowing anything