Cathedral Stone
Seeing Too Much and Feeling Too Much
with a Layer Missing
by Susan Dunn
September 2000
Lowell -- bulbous pemphigoid blisters
The most important thing in life
Is to be able to stop the madness
And that means when you hear
And Captain Fuckup couldnt even pull off a suicide right,
Thats your cue to STOP the conversation
Just say NO
If youre the sensitive type, like me,
The type thats missing a layer of skin.
Youve got to know those cue words --
Like when fuckup is combined in any way with suicide --
Or youre going to be lying awake at night months later
Picturing the boy with his face blown away
And his brains all over the carpet
Maybe his eyeballs are still in his skull,
Maybe not,
Feeling his way across the wall of his parents bedroom
Leaving for his parents God knows what they did to deserve this,
Thats always the question, isnt it?
The quintessential Martha Stewart wallpaper
Using products readily available in the home,
In the new minimalist flesh and blood red --
For oh, who knows 30 minutes, an hour?
In that shape 1 minute would have been too long,
Trying to just what was he trying to do?
What do you do after youve blown your brains out sort of.
Its my thing, evidently the deaths of young men.
The year before that I accompanied a friend on a sympathy call
To her friend who had watched while her husband and their older son,
Who were sitting in the front seat of the go-cart,
Ducked under the wire that decapitated the younger son,
The 15 year old, who was sitting in the back seat.
I used to lie awake at night wondering did they yell to the kid?
Did they even think about him being back there,
And why didnt he see it?
Ive heard so many awful stories about kids dying
The computer nerd told me his brothers son was an addict,
And he didnt come home the night before they were going to take him to rehab,
So the father got mad, washed his hands of it all, as fathers will,
And said he wasnt going to take him.
The mother was determined, so she called the older brother,
The family star, who was studying to pass the bar.
They went and got the addict, and they all got in the car and headed for Oklahoma.
3 hours later all 3 of them were killed by a drunk driver who crossed the median.
My brother almost didnt make it, said the computer nerd.
I was appalled.
I was tricked on that one, too, though it wasnt that gory,
Because I thought our theme was happy endings to addict tales.
So, I used to lie awake at night,
Wondering about all those details I couldnt get out of my head,
Because Im missing that layer of skin and those stories get in and fester
Like a bullous pemphigoid blister and never really heal.
I wondered how a head falls off
When its been cut off by a wire.
Did it stay in the go-cart, or fall to the ground?
Who picked it up?
And I pictured Levy-Dhurmers painting,
Because a mother of a son would hold that head to her that way,
Attached to the body or not.
I would.
And I wondered what a man does whos lost his whole family
Strictly speaking due to the addict who, if hes typical,
Had already caused 100 years of pain.
And those are horrible stories,
But now theres one so much worse,
Its pushed them from my thoughts.
It isnt a mystery he was in the bathroom of a house
At 53rd and the Av in Seattle,
And it isnt a mystery I know all the details
He shot-up with one sterile needle (found in his pocket)
Containing bad stuff, all revealed in the blood test;
And there was no pain,
He had just called me,
Having found out his chances for his Ph.D. stipend were excellent,
Then shot-up, then got high, then it hit his heart, and that was it;
And there was no gore
He was immaculate when they pronounced him dead at the hospital
Hair freshly washed, no dirt under his fingernails or toenails,
His clothing (given to me in a sealed orange plastic bag)
Smelling fresh and clean, and vaguely of him,
His teeth shiny clean --
How very like him, I thought, how considerate
To die that way. Thats how he kept his room.
So it was a simple death, really,
Unremarkable to tell,
No one would stop me from telling it,
And I know every detail.
Its just that he was mine,
And it happened to me.
With this one,
There is gangrene,
And the prognosis is not good.