The Premature Case of Education vs. Jones
by Derek Reid
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cry cry at his funeral you BASTARD my brother died too early (in total fear) shake the fertilizer cup your shapeless tears go there I say put your watering can in the hole and start filling (pray for his rebirth) O the skin on your soul is rough! I told his head rough as the lady our father ravaged with sharp pointed blows until baby boys appeared near as I make it he suspected you are a killer whale with 54 rows of teeth and 7 eyes … and a lollipop blowhole that puffs cigars I am a stuck – barge in a superstructure of ice as you MAY recall he was the tossed away french-fry in the bin behind Dairy Queen AND YOU WERE THE BIRD WHO SWOOPED DOWN TO TAKE HIM INTO YOUR MAW and ingest him into your boiling gullet full of half-savaged beetles …
true my father’s buried here – his life of infrequent joy and terminal rage ended over there in the unmarked plot lying down flat in the graveyard dark with the runaway weeds ... 4 witches of winter (watch the rose poem not bloom) help me write a few lines that might validate his life when I say GO because his eyes and suit are black from so much rot (remember the “accident” with the hand pistol) I did not see the cyclone-storm twisting DOWN-SPINNING and I did not yell AND THE GRAVEDIGGER UNION JUST PULLED HIM MID-ABSTRACTION all I really know is pray for rain and get an EDUCATION the memory is strange but these clear-lit poems remind me of your voice father and your resolve brother to think therefore you are REMEMBER WE JOURNEYED SEEKING ESCAPE TO YOUR DIRTY CAMPUS the ugly middle-kingdom we imagined would fill us back up with mother’s milk …
that first year your croaky voice was (barely audible) beneath the constant din of late-night TV and sugar-lipped honeys we lived? for the freedom of unlimited cigarette smoking and discovering Joyce on our own but second year was worse on him than a comet strike and he responded to your INTIMATE REPRESSION and OFF-HAND CONDESCENSION by refusing to be coherent my brother’s enrollment in your school of design was his curse 8 hours a day unless he decided to skip in which case he’d sit around picking my brain for useless answers to Speed Stick deodorant? and the reason why no light can escape a kidney pie (he survived on a diet of mud and stone) and he wanted me to pass the treasure which I got off the GREAT TABLE in the library the only one he couldn’t go to because his carp-like demeanor always offended the elders …
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the last brutal year sucked every ounce of blood from him (filled every pore with rage in him) as you re-heaped your collected ill-will on him like you were vomit and he was the laneway outside a nightclub – THEN WE KNOCKED ON YOUR LOCKED OFFICE DOOR SO YOU COULD EXPLAIN THE CLICKING NOISE YOU MADE IN CLASS and your savage metamorphosis from professional to monster … my brother whose plight was more desperate than God’s was melting in pool of sopping Kleenex and SALT holding quizzes and exams with NC AWK SP and INC stamped there, there … and even there! DAMN YOU! Screaming “Why?” screaming “Why?” he fainted when he heard you say the new theories of administration preclude CREATIVE REASONING and with cheerleader practice at 10 sharp you left him in the hall to an eternity of ‘Good Times’ reruns …
sad man searing in trying to mend his earthen mind of its cracks and splinters HIS LION’S HEART met its darkest jungle ever in your poetry class the morning he took his life we sat together in bunches I saw you there lecturing about? memory loss to the bodies (while CHRISTOPHER had pens sticking from every orifice) scribbling zombie-like the history you were inventing or so I thought he excused himself to view the rising sun he said and in a flash I heard the metal retort of the pistol he carried zipping across the campus like the worst valedictorian speech ever aired crying out of fear for his soul I skidded – in his blood FOR I HAD MISJUDGED THE VISCOSITY OF HIS PASSION … to the back of the room I flew, a cahier flying overhead … a voice saying 911 was on the way … a dazed glance inside his book revealed that Chris’ next-to-last act was one of dizzying repetition “Think I cannot my mind is full of snot …” over and over my dead brother’s words and then “Fuck you, teacher” scrawled on the final page of the term ...
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