Eyes dyed in sky, arms stretched then akimbo--
I hope you don't hate when I reduce you to a symbol
Traced contours with a star map and fingertip
One amongst the Pleiades or handle of the Little Dip[1]
On a hill where greyed men argued like child kings
I played an instrument and you joined in to sing...[2]
Far faint lights, through the void or silence
I still get to look to you for guidance
In Hangman I taught her syzygy, and she taught me jazz[3]
And how to avoid themes of Tower cards of the past
I brought up mentalism and the art of Cold Reading
She promised that there's something West of East of Eden
Memories like a sieve, fit for self-deceiving
But palm lines read, told of release from bleeding, and
After repeated graceful redirections
You get the hint to stop asking those sorts of questions, and
After you stop asking sort of questions
Maybe regret is what you're left with
Always vague on the specifics, but
It was just a matter of time before your light got eclipsed
Now parted by Pluto
The reflected truth showed
As if by the moon's glow--
Pops Jupiter to Juno
Brother was a bluenose
Fated for the hoosegow
An addled, violent, Bluto
Apogee to nadir, you would hid your true lows
Tidally locked the way you'd only show a bright side
And while I cherish memories running free in the night time
You'd fend off any offer of an offer a lifeline
Trauma taught a tether was a tool meant to bind
Your life's exegesis: support it is a weakness
Any closeness an opening to pick apart your pieces
A crutch becomes prosthesis
Anything beyond your inner space only fit to lease--
It's sickness and I shared that thesis, that tendency to orbit
Up in the Oort cloud lending impulse to the torpid
An island in the company of four and twenty corvids
Sure, sure, we're all stardust. Photos of Arbus[4]
Fallen far afield from the target market
The raft we shipped the S.S. Shared Hardships
With little love of lucre or largesse
The bare-thread art kids,
Hit spliffs, working red-eye shifts,
Til they emit that red light, drift[5]
After warehouse celebrations of Saturn
In descent you spy not the healthiest of patterns[6], like
K closed eyes while in transit[7]
Celestial smile that got occluded by the manic
The frantic panic of the passenger the next seat over
Unable to impede a supernova
Signs open to early detection
dismissed as youthful indiscretion, you
Keep the company of masters of misdirection[8]
It gets second nature, the habit of second-guessing
Heard about your death through a game of telephone
By the time we got the message you were long gone
I know your mass in your absence
Felt it through a warping of the fabric[9]
Clocks no longer track accurate
Time goes slow yet fast
When memories you make just aren't lasting
I know what needs are inelastic
Found out when you collapsed in
Friends fractured to factions
I was less than last pick
Wondering exactly what it was that I'm lacking
Any joy is a distraction, comfort a malefaction
Each day you stay will eat away as it's delay of action
Up the tracks in a bath, slit
Dunno man, guess I got survivors guilt
World keeps spinning just with axis tilt
An unhealthy epitaph, the excuse I'd draft:[10]
Continuing with what you'd built
Dunno dude, guess I got abandonment baggage
Follows where I go but keep it stuffed in the attic.
On nights where there's low light pollution
I'll assemble it to get a view of something human
Still struggle with thoughts that my proximity is toxic, and yet
I miss your adjacency, through borrowed eyes I'd see that
Like life's a box of nascent seeds-- you made it breathe
Unsure what Scholomance or alchemy
You were a giving breed, a big bro to me
The highest tree your canopy, shelter from the storms.
Bi but never frosty connecting worlds like I'm Norse[11]
But the roots diseased, seen in rotten fruits and wilted leaves
A serpent lurks and eats, til replete with grief[12]
You crossed a sea to keep from being seen weak
Hold your guts to keep them from falling free
Under that pressure the only escape was release
Or, the first time that we spoke alone it was to mend a broken wing[13]
Set the tone that you're the type that tends to tend to wounded things
Beyond the scope of what you may be capable of handling.
Different person sure, but suffers a shared malady.
Or, you called me up way late at night and demanded the move I choose[14]
You'd make a cabin in the woods, needed: Chinese, Irish, Jew, ...
You stalked a girl, a family friend, when she danced it was just for you--
The quirks were taking on a darker hue
Or, you moved to Portland with your gal to build a life past parents pad, [15]
Fought the system in the streets, fist raised and shouting out ACAB.
Down with other people's problems, you'd fight all of the world's ills,
But something tripped you up and then you lost the battle with the pills.
You slept up under Cobain's bridge, had a pace/energy that few could match.[16]
Mercurial moods just got much, when you died she got put on blast.
Now she's older then you were, heard it through the vine
That she's working as an escort, but she liked to walk a line
Your mom ran off with another man, your school life on arrival, dead[17]
Your dad walked to the local park and put a bullet in his head
Now your sister was your ward, hope you're out their managing, but
Maybe you just passed it on, the pain that you'd been channeling
In that vein, the boy I babysat that'd later change his name[18]
Afraid you'll be another crooked petal on the daisy chain
You liked Kerbal, airplanes and wrasslin'
But before adoption you'd been used as an ashbin
Sean you were a spaceman, the energy and calm and patience--[19]
To a kid [you were] unassuming and delightful
Some might say for the world you're just too gentle
I'd say it's your choice to go quiet to the night
To anyone that didn't make the list or couldn't fit the scheme
Anyone too distant for me to get their weights or histories:
Wish you were dealt a better hand
Wish you had had a better end
Wish I'd been a better man, a better friend
But wishing is for shooting stars
So I'll look up while writing bars
...and I don't want to in any way reduce you
But if I knew your essence I would bottle and mass produce you
My wabi-sabi kimosabes,
I would mint a million copies, the
Often goofy, sometimes bawdry
Adds some value, not shit from Lockheed
Bric-a-braks, knickknacks, gimcracks, and tchotchkes--
You'd find value in the motley
...and I'm not ignoring the flaws beneath the surface
But I've seen you at your best and that's what took purchase
Cuts through thick city sussurus
Like life's better playing co-op not verseless
Y'al had some musical souls, Apollonian lute trailing Sol[20]
My never-subtle Suns, fuel to make those shuttle runs
Getting through the gibbous day and building up them bubble buns
So I'll be a home loaner to avoid being a home aloner
A loam comber, that's growing my own Roma
A ruins of Rome roamer, skipping the owned Mona[21]
Straight to the Dover, slopes to sober a coma
To make tombs for known soldiers who shouldered undue boulders
Hewn from stone, my own soma
Code donor, Semi-tone blower
Play blue notes, make em smolder
Break a cycle, take the coda
That's to say if I escape the maze of Borges paved with ablution and abasement[22]
I think I'll owe it to your constellations
And if I way lose my way, stumble in a haze I'll use you for orientation
To all recipients unreachable, I appreciate each of you
Put on tea for two
The Pleiades are the Seven Sisters, "sis" was used as a term of endearment. The handle of the Little Dipper is the North Star used for navigation. ↩︎
Set on the hill I met S on, where I used to play in some pick-up soccer. Teams often chosen between two elderly Middle Eastern guys, both named Jamal. One of them cheated a lot and argued a lot, the other was endlessly patient... so there was a lot of arguing, but just one "child king". ↩︎
A play off Hanged Man, leading into the Tower card reference. I was being a showoff, busting out 'syzygy' or hinting someone's interests were dumb by talking about mentalism. 'Jazz' is just as good. S was naturally musical. Her being up for things like palm reading or tarot softened me to a parent's similar (harmful) tendencies. In a bit of coincidence I found the man is hanging from the world tree, later referenced and a symbol for K, and a lot of the symbolism is surprisingly on point. ↩︎
Diane Arbus, famous for befriending and photographing outsiders/marginalized groups. ↩︎
That section speaking on some of the community I met through K that distanced themselves, not all nicely, after he died. A play off redshift for the growing distance and the subsequent car verse. ↩︎
More astronomy/mythology refs with Saturnalia and 'descending' for the come down from party drugs that was getting self-destructive in that group. ↩︎
I have a memory of driving late at night, K on top of the world. Getting swept up in the energy with him... then realizing we'd almost crashed/died. ↩︎
I'd often blame myself for not doing more. Doing something, since there were so many warning signs I just wasn't getting. At the same time everyone was good at deflecting concern. That sort of thing stokes your neuroticism... second-guessing like "When you say you're okay, are you okay okay? Or are you okay like K?" ↩︎
"Heaviness" warping space-time for the sort of "stuck" you get with depression or unprocessed trauma. ↩︎
It was hard reconciling how I felt about K/S with what happened. They were better people, stronger people, more mature, solid. If they were gone I should be, too, or something was wrong with me or the world. Some nebulous notion of luck or tunnel vision applied to the sort of world we all wanted to see was a way to get out of that loop, but not the healthiest. ↩︎
Eesh, I'm getting why people don't like pun smiths. A play on K's orientation and tendency to connect people by the bifrost . For some reason he just liked Yggdrasil. A necklace of it was the only memento I had after his death, ended up giving it to a s/o to cheer them up and work on trust... promptly lost, lul. But a sibling made me an awesome stained glass piece. Another nice coincidence was finding it ties in to the Pole Star.
So Nidhogg got used for the things eating away at him under the surface. ↩︎
Someone I dated was in a peer group in college. When reflecting on how much I was standoffish I'd sometimes think about how we'd known each other for 4 years but hadn't ever spoken one-on-one until she'd found a hurt bird and asked for help taking it to a clinic. ↩︎
Another college friend. Eccentric, religious, but generally a good guy. After he graduated he ended up going to another place, studying Egyptology and possibly getting a little Hotep. He reconnected and talked about pursuing a family friend, "coincidentally" at his new school, many years younger and clearly uncomfortable. I'd get calls at 3am asking me what my move is, then explaining he'd gotten into competitive Pokemon. Increasing stalker tendencies ("God promised to me", "she just needs to understand I'm always right"), and arrested/institutionalized. Eventually I went no-contact, then years later I heard he died. ↩︎
Musician that made the mentioned mecca. His fiancee was the person I knew, and she was like... 12(?) years younger and a teenager. She broke things off, wanting to travel, and he ended his life. She got blamed by some people. Randomly heard from her (note in a mailbox), and that she was an circus-y performer / escort, but seemed to be okay. ↩︎
A neighbor that just had a rough lot. Nothing he excelled in and teased, then he had his family fall apart. Used to carpool with his openly racist grandma. Sometimes I wonder if he turned out bitter or like his grandma, or how much anyone deserves to blame him if he did. ↩︎
Adopted by relatives but was struggling with behavioral problems and years behind in school. The parents wanted me to fill some mentor role and weren't getting polite deflections. I wasn't in a place to take that on, and a half-effort felt worse than nothing. In some ways he was getting better, but sometimes he'd show a violent side out of nowhere. ↩︎
My first encounter with suicide. A super nice guy from when my mom went to a community college after her divorce. He had no problem getting on the level of a shy ~6-7 year old. One day he was just gone. Personally really dislike people that call it a selfish choice-- it's usually a last resort from people failed by their circumstances many times over. ↩︎
Some cut references made this make more sense. Some Nietzsche mentions, and a bit of media that was one of the last things I watched with S. ↩︎
Thoughts on what to do in the future to enjoy life a bit. A great uncle praised Italy in a way that made it sound amazing. Occasionally I'll try gardening. Being a couch surfing host was a lot of fun. ↩︎
The Borges mention tied into more cut references. ↩︎