for J.C. ( not Jesus Christ)

 


you grew up a good  
Catholic boy    
   
Mass, communion,  
the rosary, the Virgin    
Mary on Sundays    
   
but your love of all  
those holy sacraments  
and saints changed when    
you found dope could    
fuck you better than any    
high school cheerleader    
   
and your words curled up from    
the page like smoke from    
a junkies cigarette    
   
from sports to addict  
to prose to poetry to  
rock star  
   
I watched a YouTube    
of you reciting your  
poems at St. Marks  
   
delicate rhythms to  
lines  
   
understated like a cat stalking  
cold blue moon beams across    
old victorian floorboards    
   
who were you reciting  
to?  
   
the audience?  
   
yourself?  
   
no one?  
   
sometimes you would  
break free of the verse  
like a child dropping    
from the womb as a word  
from your poem could    
talk you into telling a  
story of a thought you  
found entertaining    
   
and somehow, like    
true north, you always    
found your way back  
home to the poem and  
the point  
   
was it God or all those  
years on heroin that  
freed your mind to    
wander through dark  
Bibles that others are  
too cowardly to read  
or acknowledge such  
things exist in all of us  
   
even years after    
leaving the spoons,  
candles, baggies,  
needles, syringes    
behind  
   
you looked thin, pale like    
a man starving for soul    
food and chasing his    
last drop of blood down  
some dirty drain on the  
East Side of New York  
in the early seventies    
   
and that day you died  
sitting there  
composing    
   
I wonder if you were  
writing about death,  
thinking about    
death?  
   
or if death took you  
because we only    
deserve such genius    
in our memories    
and dreams