Strange Days and Dreams

Tonight is the end of what has seemed a very strange day. All I can think of is that I may not have been the only one experiencing this strange sort of day and that it must have been the weather. Random thoughts and wierd dreams began the day and they escalated into a mild paranoia and some very wishful thinking. Several years ago a former classmate told me that another classmate had passed away from cancer. At that point, if I recall correctly, that made three former classmates gone, all from some type of cancer. It is tempting to try to reach back through the years to try to find some words that might seem a fitting eulogy, but if I am to be honest with myself, I have to acknowledge that I really did not know any of them well and that I could hardly compose a fitting tribute without more information from those who were a great deal closer to each of them. Brian died right after we all graduated and I am forced to recall that most of my interactions with him had not been very convivial. Adam, who I recall primarily as having given himself some really terrible and disgusting burns from cigarettes - some kind of macho-teenage-testosterone toxic dare thing - and I remember thinking how idiotic that was. Adam later became a dentist and had married before he died from the same type of disease my sister is now battling.* The last of my former classmates that I know of was Robin. I had a very obvious crush on him from eighth grade until about my Junior year, I think, when other interests and possibilities in life began to present themselves to me (it was only a transfer of adolescent emotions to a less worthy object/individual) and I do not recall being overly interested in any kind of relationship by the time of our graduation. Robin was an interesting person, and so I defend my adolescent yearnings as being those of having been attracted to someone worthy of such attentions. He was interested in acting and, although we were all still very young and acted like it when we shouldn't have, he was a nice person to talk to, but then again, we really never had much opportunity to converse beyond a few projects here and there during the last two years of school. Still, I was suprised to hear he was gone and I found that I was feeling a genuine grief that we would never be able to talk again, to find out about one anothers' lives, to compare notes on life after high school and to catch up on all we were no longer too clear on about having been in high school. I do not think it matters that I knew Robin so little or that we really hadn't spoken much or too often during school. In some way and at some level I was fond of Robin and had counted him as a friend, or at least a friendly acquaintance, both of which seem rare and more precious than they did when we were so much younger. Because of this, no matter when or how or if I ever make it to one of our reunions, I will always feel something missing, lacking, from those reunions because Robin is no longer there. In retrospect there was probably very little I could have done to help him or to comfort him during the time of his final illness, although I will always wish I could have somehow held his hand or been able to truly be a friend, as I realize now we would have never been anything more than that to one another and yet, being a friend and having a friend is a very profound and meaningful thing and should not ever be taken for granted or scoffed at by any of us. I hope Robin somehow knew this and, if he ever thought about it at all, realized that only kind thoughts were his, and hope for something better than an ignominious death at too young an age. I wrote a poem in high school that I think may have been about my feelings for Robin during those young and frustrating years of growing up and becoming myself, finally. I will share it here and hope that it is not one that would have offended him or hurt him in any way and I hope, wherever he now is, that he even likes it a little.

(untitled)

My love for you is unrequited.
I never told you how I feel.
Instead of speaking up,
A broken stick for pen I wield.
I write my passion in a flowing hand
Upon the beaches endless sand.

I know for certain you would laugh at me.
Its a "school girl crush" in a transitionary rage.
I spill my heart upon the shore,
An actress on an empty stage.
From each grey dusk 'til greyer dawn
I write, knowing that with the next tide,
All evidence against me will be gone.

Another poem, this one new:

They have gone before us and
We in our life cannot abide
The memory of death now attending
All thought of those who have died.
Yet, none of you seem completely gone,
Merely moved to another shore
But still able to see and hear our thoughts
Just unable to touch a hand, caress a face,
From your current dwelling place.
This seems somehow correct to me
Although my mind denies the realm
Of afterlife where you're now framed
As being mere imaginary flame.
One puff of logic and reason and you are all undone
My mind may insist you no longer exist
But my heart has eyes of its own.

To A Brother

To look on my brother
Is to see a soul
Wounded.
God, in your
Eternity
Could heal and
Mend,
But then, You
Don't really
Listen to me,
Though I call you
Again and Again.

My Brother

He sounds tired on the phone
Maybe its the emphysema
Or the cigarettes
Or the antipsychotic medications
A parade of benevolent dictators
Regulating his emotions
His soul

He is only one year
My junior
But he looks and sounds
So much older
An ancient in tattered, dirty jeans
With tobacco-stained nails
That carry the ages of eternity
In a filthy crust

Brilliant was one of the words
They used to describe the genius
The poet
The incredible, arrogant intellect
Now framed by the sagging and sad shell
Housing what is left of my brother.

With love to all of my former classmates, relatives, and friends. Wherever they dwell.

*Since this was written I have learned how little I really new about Adam. There is a very fitting tribute to him at this url: http://www.chathamclassof76.com/adamthornton/adamthornton.html
Although primarily for our class to read the tribute to Adam is so touching I felt it would be unfair not to make sure anyone reading this in the future remain uninformed as to who Adam actually was and what impact he had managed to make in his short time with us. I wish I had known him a little better than I did. He was an amazing person.