This is not OK…

I.

this is the second poem I’ve written since

my brother was killed.

He died alone in a ditch off an indifferent road

he was drunk and it was only an hour before his birthday

I had just left him at my mom’s house

he was quite sure

he’d be OK to drive

I found out the next day

he was pretty fuckin far

from OK

We had this way of talking to each other

it was funny roundabout not too intimate

I could never look him in the eye

and we weren’t that close

but now he’s gone

I’ll never get to see him

or fuck with him

or ignore him again

you have no idea

you just don’t

you have no idea

how much that

hurts.

so yeah, we had this way of talking

and I made it up along the way or maybe he did

I’m not sure but we’d say, “Are you OK?”

or: Is that OK? and eventually, “This is not OK!”

I used to say that when he’d leave a pile of clusterfuck

dirty dishes or food in the microwave

or once him and his friends came home plastered from a concert

and played the concert DVD loud and I had just went to bed

and I didn’t bitch, I didn’t rise as surly gruff tattooed Just Woke Up Guy

and read them the riot act, no I remember I just lie there

and waited for the madness to go away

and it did

eventually.

the next morning, I remember we passed in the hall

and he said, “Last night was not OK, huh?”

“No,” I said, almost smiling, “That was pretty fuckin’ far from OK.”

God we used to talk like that,

 it was just a joke it was just fun between brothers.

but I’m writing this now, the second poem I wrote

since Death literally left its business card

on my front door and I’m thinking that

This Is Definitely

Not

OK.

II.

It’s been just a few weeks since we buried him

it smarts sometimes I guess it’s supposed to

I remember reading the guidelines recently

about poetry submissions

and one of the criteria was don’t submit if

you think poems are a good substitute for therapy

or something like that . I sat down to write this

and all I can think about

how heavy that cherrywood casket

how cruel that coroner’s business voice

how horrific that day turned out to be:

I was snowboarding not a care in the world

navigating the snow, ogling girls, eating a turkey sandwich

bitching about the heat, and the price of lift tickets

bitching about how we almost got lost going home

ruminating about the now infamous waitress

and meanwhile my brother was dead already

he had been since before I went to bed that night

he was dead just a half hour after I last saw him

seems like

a

lifetime

ago.

and come to think of it

I guess

it

was.

III.

I went to sit with him today

I was taken aback by that rectangle sunken

patch of grass and mud it was cracked on one corner

it looked like there was an opening going down there

to him, it was scary, took me by surprise.

there were two blue flags and some flowers already there

I cried and my hand shook I was four years old again

like when I went to go visit the Crash Site

not too long ago. I took a book my mother gave me

I read some of it

I watered the grass growing on top of him

with my saltwater, with my soul, with my childhood memories,

gone in one flash one instant one tree one drink

just like that

so I sat there awhile it was cold there were

a lot of clouds

and I had lots of questions

and no prayers really

since I was sitting there

on top of my mother’s worst nightmare

I didn’t have any prayers

no

I definitely didn’t have any prayers

to say there.

I talked to him, though

I asked him questions

I promised him I’d take care of mom

I told him about this girl I have a big crush on

how she moves me

how she reminds me of our mother

and I told him how sad I was to be sitting there

like a little boy

sitting and crying

on the grave

of his

big

brother.

IV
I’d been in his room since It Happened

mainly to get memorabilia, pictures, his guitar for us to play

at the funeral, and some paperwork.

I had to get people’s phone numbers, stuff like that

and I remember finding a bottle here, a bottle there

an empty glass there, a cork there. And then when I dug deeper

there was the Da Kine Stank Bud or whatever

the fuck they call it these days

I found the rolling papers I found the magical wands

of inspiration he must’ve used to get all that work done

and I remember just the other day finding a toilet paper tube bong

it was lonely sitting outside his door under a crate

it had spiderwebs. I picked it up and the wind was blowing

and it was lonely there for a second

I kept thinking about the lump sum of that equation

all those bottles, that car, that offramp and that tree

and I welled up with familiar tears and realized

he was the one that taught me how to make one of those

and it all made sense, I guess.

Me there sober and crying

and him dead now and still lying

by

omission.

—?/??/2003 East of Los Angeles.