Gabriel Read online

  But it was impossible for Mallarmé

  Though year after year

  He labored at a tomb for Anatole

  Which he could never complete

  An immortality made human

  An offering to the absolute

  With his son

  Transposed by death

  Mallarmé was left with fragments

  He came by my office for cash

  Every Monday Wednesday and Friday

  I was good for thirty bucks a pop sometimes more

  You only drop by when you want your money

  I said but he protested it’s not like that Dad

  He didn’t like to think of himself that way

  I was usually working at the computer

  When he strolled in

  Dad you’re the sort of person

  Who needs to work a lot

  I’m the sort of person

  Who needs a lot of down time

  He wasn’t doing anything all day long

  He just slept in and hung with his friends

  And so I tried to convince him to volunteer

  For an organization he was contemptuous

  He thought volunteering was for stooges

  He didn’t like charities either

  He told his friends he had once

  Attended a six-month training program

  In audio production at EWF

  He had some skills using Pro Tools

  And Reason software he had major skills

  In DJing and music production

  He told my friends he was going back to school

  To finish up his degree in marketing

  At the University of Massachusetts

  He just needed a few more credits

  To collect his diploma

  Maybe next summer

  From the playbook

  Say you get caught lifting eighty bucks

  Out of your dad’s wallet or your mom’s purse

  Simply deny it deny everything

  Never take responsibility for what

  You could not possibly have done

  The strategy for getting what you want

  When you want it is simple

  Never take no for an answer

  Pump up the volume

  Remember that no is not an option

  It is just a temporary setback

  He wanted us to buy him a bicycle

  So he could deliver specialty donuts and ice cream

  Concoctions at night in Hell’s Kitchen

  It was a scheme we refused

  He found an old girl’s bicycle on the side

  Of the street and fixed it up for twenty bucks

  Take that parents

  He never used the bike because the shop

  Didn’t bother to call him back Janet still has it

  He was determined to get his own apartment

  And certain that epilepsy qualified him

  For a free apartment from the city

  Otherwise he could move in with Tamar

  Her dad would get her an apartment as soon

  As she went back to school full time

  He was finally accepted for Job Path

  He could make some real dough at last

  And get an apartment after Labor Day

  I stood at the damaged site

  Across the street from my house

  And watched a steel ball

  Crashing into the homeless shelter

  Abandoned on Dean Street

  All the people scattered

  It takes tremendous force

  To weaken a building

  And turn bricks into rubble

  It doesn’t take long

  The crane swung around

  And pitched the heavy ball

  Into the guts of the structure

  Holding its side

  Like a wounded veteran

  The hard hats gathered

  To watch the pendulum swing

  Into the concrete body

  Of a building slated for demolition

  So there could be progress

  I was against the project

  And riveted to the wreckage

  Time and again the fighter wavered

  And finally collapsed

  I did not stay to see the building

  Broken down into debris

  And then carted away

  Some nights I could not tell

  If he was the wrecking ball

  Or the building it crashed into

  It’s the way he roared into the house

  And started to rant

  Against those he did not like

  Rude waiters who charged him extra

  For stuff he ordered too much

  On a whim his appetite vanished

  He did not like certain cousins

  Preppies fake bohemians in the Village

  Spoiled Amherst students Mass-holes

  Especially bugged him

  Social workers he did not like

  Men in tight leggings feminists

  Do you even know what a feminist is

  Laurie asked him he did not

  Like hairy-armed lesbians kissing

  On the street in Northampton

  All right all right that’s enough now

  I said it was hard to calm him down

  Once he started to rail

  Against boy bands or Hasidic Jews

  Or boarding schools those hellholes

  Models and snobs annoyed him

  He didn’t have much use

  For bullies or honor students

  Don’t be a hater his friends said

  Don’t drink a pitcher of Haterade

  But he just laughed

  And continued the blast

  His parents did not escape his wrath

  I wonder if he forgave us

  Laurie and I looked around

  Jittery and shaken the after-draft

  Was like drinking a pot of coffee

  And then trying to sleep

  It was impossible

  To keep track of him at all hours

  He spent whatever money he had

  Whenever he had it spendthrift gambler

  I could never stay mad at him for long

  He just shrugged his shoulders

  And laughed helplessly

  I couldn’t help it I had to Dad

  He wasn’t made for a world

  Of checkbooks and savings accounts

  Stockbrokers investment bankers

  Charlie called him a Clown of God

  He wasn’t a Monster of Subtlety

  Like the two of us

  He would try anything once he hazarded

  He was sometimes scared

  He was never scared enough

  Of scoundrels and drug dealers

  He thought teachers and supervisors

  And psychiatrists were the enemy

  Policemen riled him he had rights

  A lover a posse of friends

  No one could restrain him

  King of the Sudden Impulse

  Lord of the Torrent

  Emperor of the Impetuous

  He breezed into the office

  With his girlfriend and hit me up

  For extra money because of the storm

  Pounding across the Atlantic Ocean

  He was heading to the store to buy food

  So they wouldn’t starve to death ha ha

  Love you he coughed and kissed me

  See you next week he was out

  The door like a thousand other times

  Some people were nervous others festive

  When we closed for the day

  And told everyone to buy supplies

  Is this the apocalypse line

  Somebody asked the disorderly crowd

  Outside the hardware store on First Avenue

  The apocalypse line was getting longer

  We should forget about power downtown

  The
spokesman for Con Ed said

  When Hurricane Irene hit North Carolina

  And started to churn up the East Coast

  The city decided to evacuate

  370,000 people from the low-lying areas

  Of Manhattan my friends in Zone A

  Boarded their windows and stormed out

  On the local news I watched some idiots

  Sitting on the beach and working

  On their tans in Asbury Park

  Here comes Irene bearing down on us

  It’s time to get out

  Of the apocalypse line

  He left the house during a rainstorm

  Almost impulsively

  He rushed out headlong into the night

  While everyone else hunkered down

  With flashlights and batteries

  The city on high alert

  The subways closing down

  Stay home the mayor said

  And only go out in an emergency

  But he left the house during a rainstorm

  And never came home

  Where was he going in such a hurry

  It was almost as if the hurricane

  Swept him away in a flood

  Swarming over the banks

  He left the house

  And headed to another town

  We had no idea where he had gone

  He was a secret

  We could not decipher

  And no one would help us find him

  We called to report him missing

  No one would help us find him

  For four days and four nights

  We tried desperately to track him down

  The hurricane carried him away

  He rushed out headlong into the night

  And I never saw him alive again

  Most reckless of reckless angels

  Who left the house during a rainstorm

  I was at home in Brooklyn

  Working on a lyric

  About the troubadours

  When he left the apartment

  On the Upper West Side

  Looking for an adventure

  I was reading the eleven poems

  Of Guilhem IX Duke of Aquitane

  The earliest troubadour

  When he left his girlfriend

  And his mother at home

  To meet a friend for a drink

  He said he would be home soon

  Don’t worry about anything

  He texted Tamar

  I didn’t know he had gone out

  In the rain it was raining steadily

  I was at home in Brooklyn working

  On a simple poem about nothing

  A troubadour song

  How nothing came to me

  When he took the train to Jersey City

  If that’s how he got there

  I thought he was at home

  While I worked on a song

  About nothing

  And then went to sleep

  Without knowing anything

  I startled awake in the morning

  I woke up and he was missing

  We kept calling his phone

  It went straight to voicemail

  This is Gabe leave a message

  We called 311

  We called 911 every day

  The police refused to help us

  We begged them to help they refused

  Because he wasn’t under sixteen or over sixty-five

  He didn’t have a life-threatening illness

  They said that epilepsy doesn’t count

  It’s not that dangerous

  They had never heard of his disorder

  This happens a lot with twenty-two-year-olds

  They said he was probably just hanging out

  With the wrong crowd

  He hadn’t been arrested he wasn’t

  In the hospitals we thought

  Maybe he was stranded somewhere

  And couldn’t get home

  The trains had stopped running

  Maybe he had spent all his money

  And couldn’t call us his phone

  Needed to be charged

  This is Gabe leave a message

  We said he had never disappeared before

  We said he always called home

  We said he had a developmental disorder

  It didn’t matter his disabilities

  Were not on the list

  And so the police refused to help us

  He never liked it when things closed

  It gave him the feeling of being locked

  In a room with bars on the windows

  He never liked it when the weather

  Interfered with plans he hadn’t made yet

  He was never too sick to go out

  When he was ten years old I had to drag him

  Out of the swimming pool in a deluge

  He wanted to cannonball off the diving board

  He wanted to stop and slash some golf balls

  He wanted to soap up the wet car

  And let the sky wash it down

  I remember the morning we escaped

  From Galveston just before the hurricane

  We coasted in front of the destruction

  One night I came out of a restaurant

  In a light rain and started to drive home

  But the storm dropped so suddenly

  I turned out of the driveway

  Into a waist-high wall of water

  And floated the car to the side of the road

  I sloshed home through the flood

  It took over an hour Gabriel shouted

  That car is dead in the water

  I thought I was the sort of person

  Who could get pummeled by a storm

  And stagger home to laugh about it

  Forget about the 468 subway stations

  Wind shut down the Staten Island Ferry

  The bridges and tunnels were closed

  I couldn’t sleep I never could sleep

  I just stared out the window

  Into the blankest space

  Not thinking exactly

  Worrying obsessively

  Waiting for daylight

  I left the house at five thirty a.m.

  And wandered past the drunks

  Sprawled out on Flatbush Avenue

  I crossed the Manhattan Bridge

  Hooded with blue shadows

  The first bicyclists of the morning

  I picked my way through Chinatown

  Thick with fruit stands

  And born-again commuters

  I steered my way up Bowery

  Sliding from Skid Row

  Into respectability

  I moved past Canal and Delancey

  The New Museum the Bowery Poetry Club

  The Bowery Mission Cooper Union

  I saw people buying coffee from trucks

  And ordering breakfast in diners

  Exactly as if nothing had happened

  Who cares I ended up at my desk

  In an office building in midtown

  Wondering what I was going to do

  All day the subways were running again

  The city presumed normal

  My son still missing

  Joe thought that Gabriel was shacked up

  With a Brazilian woman he’d met

  A couple of times in TriBeCa

  He didn’t know her name he just called her

  Brazil all their friends did he said

  He had only been to her pad

  Two or three times he could remember it

  Because it was next door to a club

  Maybe on Worth or White Street

  We found it after a couple of tries

  She lived on the second floor

  With a recording studio in the front

  We rang the buzzer

  For every apartment in the building

  No one was home in the early evening

  We decided to go a
cross the street

  To sit on a stoop and stake out

  Five floors of empty apartments

  They looked comatose in the looming dark

  Suddenly the streetlamp across the way

  Began to flicker on and off

  It’s a sign Joe said I hope it doesn’t

  Go out he was very agitated

  It’s just a streetlamp I told him

  The light wavered for a moment

  And then flicked off for good

  I don’t know where Gabe is

  Joe said despondently he’s lost

  And that’s when he knew

  His friend’s life had been extinguished

  Gabriel made his last phone call

  To a number in Jersey City

  Janet and I decided to go there

  It was just a subway ride away

  We were probably wasting our time

  But why not do something else to find him

  We took a train ride and a cab

  To the West District Precinct

  On Communipaw Avenue

  We marched up to the desk

  And told our story to the clerk

  Who requested our driver’s licenses

  We sat on cheap chairs in the lobby

  And wondered what we were doing

  In a cruddy police station in Jersey City

  We waited for twenty minutes

  For forty-five minutes an hour passed

  Why had we decided to go there

  The sergeant is investigating it

  We were told to keep waiting

  What else could we do

  We had been waiting for four days

  We had a disease no one wanted

  To help us it could never be cured

  Four men came out to talk to us

  And we followed them up the stairs

  Into an office where one of them said

  We have some bad news for you

  Your son Gabriel has passed away

  We’re sorry for your loss

  Something about Craig’s List

  Alcohol a drug called GHB

  Someone called an ambulance

  Something about emergency technicians

  Who hooked him up to an IV