Notes for If I Fade Away

tell them—inside the language

of night—Trip’s story. how he downed

bottles of rotgut to build a free morning, unshackled

inside a massive cage—a captive

King. the dewy grass, soaked & rotted wood

of every picnic table in sight, ragtag gang

formations under the morning lights. please

tell them how Trip slurred a Thursday

to make-believe he had stumbled home—back

to that country called Grandville Ave.

yet stayed tightly held inside these fences

we share, damn near tears

telling a lifer about this cold network which has grown

reckless to be the father of all these lost

men.—all they know is Daddy, he said

& so the threads of home weave inward

& like clockwork they return to their Patriarch. please

tell them how everyone & no one knew

Trip had stabbed another boy & the panoptic lenses

collected each moment, how his warm hand held

a glint of steel—sharpened down to six inches

of hard desire—& how the soft skin of a cheek

accents like a comma in a long love poem, when a banger

thrusts above an open mouth—each stab a secret

as intimate as Adam’s finger reaching toward

God or lips pressing your temple, your lover’s tongue

tracing your inner thigh. tell them some bodies

die over this—the closeness of open skin

& how there always flows another stanza

somewhere. how Trip was cuffed & stripped

& sent to the hole—& how Ruben fell under suicide watch

after he adopted a rap for the hot steel, weeks before

being released to the echoes of Glenwood & Webber.

tell them how blood & steel & longing

& all those avenues & streets compose a music

of endless search that trickles down like rain

upon the edge of our world & its religion

of  warm flesh.