I liked your white Camaro.
You, R---, little Southern boy.
It was too redneck
for who you pretended to be
and maybe that gave you away,
that you were as troubled as you were trouble.
And maybe I should have seen it
a year ago, two years ago, three.
But when I think of you now, I know I did--
so the news saddened me,
but I wasn't surprised.

You were trouble with a capital R.
Shaggy-headed wheelchair boy,
female hangers-on, playing nursemaids
because you were so cute
and they were too dumb to see you were gay.
But you let them.
Because that's what you did.
You used and abused everything you knew--
if I could name it, you had tried it--
to say nothing of B--- and the car fire.
(Friends one week, and your lawyers at her door the next.)
But there was precedent
if anyone had looked.
Because how had you landed in that wheelchair
just two years earlier?

I was drawn by your magnetism.
I won't pretend I wasn't.
I'd given up all narcotics
and wouldn't need them if I were around you.
You were a high for others:
It was fun and wild to be with you
but the crash when you left
was often far too hard to handle.

You were troubled, with a capital R.
I knew the end was coming,
that it had to come one day,
that too long of living the way you did
would one day seek a payment.
And so when I found out--
B--- sent me a text last night
(what an unceremonious way
to share such news, but how appropriate,
as the same misguided levity
ruled your very life)--
so when I found out,
I was sorry to hear it.
Sorry you were gone.
Sorry still so young.
Sorry you'd never given me another fix
after the other fatal crash.
I was sorry, but I wasn't surprised.
And sorrier yet that I wasn't.

04/17/2008

Author's Note: RGM Jr, 7/11/1986 - 4/16/2008. I hope the demons are quiet now.

Posted on 04/17/2008
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