Gabriel Read online

  It started with Kevin Tristan and Danny

  Who nicknamed himself Big Bird

  They introduced him to D.

  Meaty and large slow-moving slow-talking

  Who once stayed with us for a month

  J.M. came by sometimes a con man

  Who looked like a model he said

  He was born in Israel or the Dominican Republic

  Then he met Joe the center

  The straw-haired chosen one

  Update Freddie Mercury from Queen

  Tune up the rage

  For the speed-metal band

  Swaggering down the street

  Take the lamp the drum

  The torch lofted up and carried

  Through the middle of town

  Mr. Impulsive walked out of class

  When he did not like what the teacher said

  It was boring

  Mr. Impulsive scurried out in a storm

  Wearing shorts and a wife beater

  Soon he was shivering

  The neighbors complained to the landlord

  Complained to me but Mr. Impulsive

  Could not be bothered to close the gate

  Mr. Impulsive left the house without his keys

  I don’t know how many times

  He camped out on the front stoop

  One night he convinced a neighbor

  To shimmy the lock with a credit card

  He was never locked out again

  Mr. Impulsive will not be sleeping at home

  He’d rather stay out and crash

  Wherever he finds himself at five a.m.

  He could be oddly well-mannered

  To the parents of his friends

  He was usually welcome

  From the notebook of Mr. Impulsive

  It is better to sneak through a side door

  Than to wait in line like a sucker

  It is not necessary to get directions

  It’s much better to head out right now

  Time doesn’t matter

  These were the antics of Mr. Impulsive

  Who never knew where he was going

  Until he got there

  From the Book of Teenage Rage

  It’s just a transitional stage they said

  He was depressed defiant lethargic rude

  Restless and defensive he shuttled back and forth

  Between the Upper West Side and Brooklyn

  His parents were getting divorced

  He told people that he was sick of school

  That’s why he had gotten thrown out on purpose

  He wanted to come home instead

  When he dyed his hair red blond and green

  It was as if he’d been running through

  The spectrum of the rainbow

  When he colored his hair blue

  The sink was covered with blue dye

  As if the sky was turned upside down in a bowl

  Lights turned on all over the house

  Air conditioners blasting two TVs blaring

  Cabinet doors should not be closed

  Upstairs in his room half-eaten plates of food

  Open take-out containers uncapped drinks

  Stained sheets clothes strewn on the floor

  One toilet clogged the other plunged

  Wet towels piled on the floor

  He forgot to walk the dog

  He was too exhausted

  He could not be expected to answer

  When the tutor rang the bell

  When he read Cliffs Notes

  For Catcher in the Rye he thought

  Holden Caulfield was boring

  A teenage boy finds himself

  Lying facedown on top of a bus

  Racing through a tunnel out of the city

  He is plastered to the slippery roof

  And breathing in the terrible fumes

  Which go on for miles and miles

  A boy clinging to the surface

  His mouth full of dust

  His arms and legs spread-eagled

  A winged angel in the grime

  Remembers the ocean wind

  The spray in his face the fog lifting

  The bus slows in heavy traffic

  And the boy peers down to see

  Himself in the front seat

  Of a passing car a stick figure

  Crayoned between his parents

  And then the bus picks up speed

  And flies into the faceless darkness

  And the boy and his parents

  Become a vanishing scrawl

  Lying facedown on top of a bus

  Racing through a tunnel out of the city

  A teenage boy finds himself

  Plastered to the slippery roof

  And breathing in the exhaust

  The darkness visible at last

  And then suddenly a blackbird

  Floating like charred paper

  The bruised blue sky

  Maybe I shouldn’t go on talking

  About the self-involved young social worker

  Who convinced everyone

  She could handle Gabriel on her own

  In Amherst where she inherited a house

  From her estranged parents

  It takes a village I said

  She could not manage him

  But he settled into her basement anyway

  It took two months for her

  To decide to sell her house and move

  Into a smaller place without him

  She sent me an e-mail explaining

  That it was just too taxing to live with him

  But he was ready to stay by himself

  And she could check on him weekly

  For one hundred dollars per hour

  They could shop together

  Maybe I shouldn’t go on talking

  About an undertrained overwhelmed

  Unprofessional twenty-eight-year-old

  But on his third night in a new place

  He felt a terrible stabbing pain in his chest

  And walked to the police station in his pajamas

  The ambulance took him to the hospital

  But the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong

  With his heart it was a panic attack

  Laurie and I came up with a plan

  For a system of mentor/companions

  And he never suffered another one again

  I’d like to raise a glass to Cliff

  Bearded social worker mud-man potter

  Who shambled up for an interview

  And worked with Gabriel for two years

  In Amherst no one made more progress

  Gabe condescended to him at first

  Because he was really a hick poor guy

  Only New Yorkers had everything figured out

  And the rest of the world was playing catch-up

  I’d like to raise a glass to Moises and Christa

  The Brazilian psychologist the substitute teacher

  And New Age mother who companioned him

  I’d like to raise a glass to Tim

  Founder of YES

  Who called him a bright spark of a person

  And taught him the rights of the disabled

  Let’s also save a glass for Melissa

  Who found him three jobs through WEYA

  Summer of Amherst Department of Public Works

  Summer of Meals on Wheels

  And Forbes Public Library in Northampton

  He learned to drive and got his license

  I thought he was too out of control to own

  A car Janet bought him one anyway

  He earned three college credits for a class

  In marketing at Holyoke Community College

  He believed he could sell anything at all

  I’d like to raise a toast to anyone

  Who can convince me there is a world out there

  Where he is selling something to someone

  From the sto
rybook of bluster

  And bad judgment

  From the annals of loneliness

  From the history of kids he met

  On the street in special programs

  It was dangerous to stay in Amherst

  Lord of Misadventure

  I’m scared of rounding him up

  And turning him into a story

  God of Scribbles and Erasures

  I hope he shines through

  Like a Giacometti portrait

  I keep scraping the canvas

  And painting him over again

  But he keeps slipping away

  He was like a spider

  Preyed on by other spiders

  And older insects

  Sweet venom

  His arrivals were swift

  And his departures sudden

  I couldn’t understand how

  He lifted the shower door

  Right off its hinges

  When Gabriel cooked

  The flames rose too high

  And the fire alarm sounded

  When the fire alarm sounded

  He tore it off the wall

  And left the wires dangling

  From the Book of Regrets

  Maybe we should have gone to Tokyo

  We almost visited once

  At the time of the Pokémon craze

  A bunch of kids in Japan suffered

  Epileptic seizures like his

  Maybe we should have tried Edinburgh

  Or Dublin to see if we felt at home

  He decided he was Scots-Irish

  We never heard a nightingale

  Or played cricket on the beach

  Or sang karaoke together

  Maybe we should have kept him home

  From boarding school Janet and I

  Never quit arguing about it

  I should have been calmer

  I should have been more patient

  At least I never whacked him

  Though I wanted to a couple of times

  The only punishment that ever worked

  Was leaving the room

  Maybe we were too hard on him

  Maybe we were too soft

  The therapist recommended

  I kick him out on the street

  I never had the stomach for it

  Maybe I should have forced him

  Into a wilderness program but how

  He would have hated it hated me

  Though maybe he’d be alive

  It was a mistake

  To put her daughter in an orphanage

  During the Moscow famine

  Tsvetaeva realized too late

  It was an error

  That could never be rectified

  And cost her a daughter

  Who starved to death she said

  God punished me

  It was a mistake

  To marry off his darling second

  Daughter at ten-and-a-half

  Tagore wrote The Child for Rani

  On her deathbed at thirteen

  It could not assuage his guilt

  He returned to the Grief House

  For his youngest son his eldest daughter

  Tears could not assuage his guilt

  When Ungaretti lost his nine-year-old boy

  He understood that death is death

  In an extremely brutal way

  It was the most terrible event of my life

  I know what death means

  I knew it even before

  But when the best part of me was ripped away

  I experienced death in myself

  From that moment on

  It would strike me as shameless

  To talk about it

  That pain will never stop tormenting me

  Adolescents in the city

  Of noise young men

  In the land of confusion

  Gabriel called him Broseph

  Joe called him Hebro

  Laurie called it a bromance

  Broseph liked rock and roll old-style

  Hebro liked emo-punk

  Stomp to the music

  They smoked weed and watched ballgames

  Got into everything with everyone

  Hustled girls everywhere

  They got the call for the rave

  Subwayed it out to Williamsburg

  Banged around clubs

  Gabriel came home with a skinny Russian

  Model who sat there mutely

  And refused to eat

  She skipped out on him once

  When he was down with a cold

  No no man you’ve got it all wrong

  Joe explained in the restaurant

  We don’t need relationships

  What we need are relations

  Often they argued about one thing or another

  It was all very Shakespearean Joe said

  Gabe was my dude my equal

  Me and Gabe were young men together

  Whenever I did my endeavors

  Gabe was with me

  We took him to Arlington Park racetrack

  But they wouldn’t let him in the clubhouse

  Because he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans

  He disappeared

  And in ten minutes he came back wearing

  A button-down a tie and a blue blazer

  He stopped by with a dozen incense candles

  You don’t even like incense Laurie said

  It didn’t matter he had gotten them for free

  He bought ten cheeseburgers for ten bucks

  On the dollar menu at McDonald’s

  And threw six of them away

  He brought a six-pack of beer

  Into the common room of the nursing home

  To watch a football game with my mother

  Because everyone needs a good beer

  Especially the guy on the ventilator

  And the nurses who work too hard

  He said the countryside

  Made him feel nervous he wanted

  A twenty-four-hour kind of city

  He woke me up at two a.m.

  To take a walk he needed to talk

  Laurie pulled me back into bed

  He had flat feet and an awkward gait

  He didn’t like to dance he liked

  To go to raves and chill with friends

  He couldn’t pay attention

  But his meds made him feel sleepy

  And he sold them to college kids

  He liked to kick back and remember

  The time we were riding home

  In a taxicab on the West Side Highway

  And my mother offered to take him

  To a strip club for his twenty-first birthday

  What’s wrong with that she wanted to know

  Why they couldn’t celebrate together

  That’s just what you want he bellowed

  Going for a lap dance with Grandma

  He liked to kick back and declare

  He wanted to track down his birth mother

  To see if he really had Celtic blood

  He liked to kick back and tell my family

  About the time he saw an American Hasidic

  Jewish reggae musician at Hampshire College

  He saw Nicholas Cage going up an escalator

  In a movie theater and turned to his friends

  I hate Nicholas Cage he has such a big head

  He liked to kick back and tell us

  How much he liked weed and ’shrooms

  How bad could it be for you he said

  It comes out of the ground

  He liked to kick back and roll a spliff

  With his friends at night

  He always liked to go higher and higher

  We’re here he’d say lifting his hand

  To the middle of his chest

  But we need to go here

  He continued on

  And raised his hand up to his neck

  Friedrich Rückert w
rote 425 poems

  After his two youngest children

  Died from scarlet fever

  Within sixteen days of each other

  In 1833 and 1834 he could not cope

  And often thought they had gone out

  For a while they’ll be home soon

  He told himself to tell his wife

  They’re only taking a long walk

  Mahler scored five of those poems

  In 1901 and 1904 for a vocalist

  And an orchestra to break your heart

  As soon as I heard the plaintive oboe

  And the descending movement of the horn

  And the lyric baritone entering

  I felt I should not be listening

  To Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing

  Kindertotenlieder with the Berlin Philharmonic

  Mahler’s wife was superstitious

  And thought he was chancing disaster

  With Songs on the Death of Children

  Now the sun wants to rise so brightly

  As if nothing terrible had happened overnight

  The tragedy happened to me alone

  Mahler knew he could never have written them

  After his four-year-old daughter died

  From scarlet fever three years later

  He said he felt sorry for himself

  That he needed to write these songs

  And for the world that would listen to them

  Mallarmé was left in fragments

  And could not right it

  After his adored Anatole

  His exquisite second born

  His future prospects

  A celestial soul

  Succumbed to rheumatic fever

  Treacherous blow of death

  Ridiculous enemy

  Ailing in springtime

  Mourned in winter

  His eight-year-old was lodged

  In a little cemetery

  Overlooking the Seine

  Where skaters glided by at Christmas

  And barges froze in the canals

  And the moon eclipsed

  His future projects

  Hugo could speak of his daughter’s death

  Hugo was happy to be able to speak

  Of his daughter’s death