Yorick, Robin Williams Never Played

 

 

 

Socrates was the name of my friend’s cat

(or just plain Socks, for short)

Who died the same hour the lunar

Bruise of the comedian’s smile

 Dripped from the stage

 Light of the planet in high

Pitched Nanu-nanus, sad all

 Alone while playing a video game

by himself, tourniquet waistline

Caffeinated Harlequin

Wiry mop for a halo

Gay Pride friendly suspenders

Saying goodbye, reeling pulley

 curtain of his eyelids

Hushed in front of an audience

Who laughed out loud

 But could not hear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While twin time zones east

The Polydactyl pulse

 of Socrates (the cat) 

Fell listless and asleep

in my friend Valena’s gentle

 arms having refused water

 the week before his frame,

emaciated  limp sagebrush of poof

 leaving us the same hour we heard

 the news that your body was found.

 

My friend burying her lap

Pet of fourteen year behind  childhood

Home destroyed by the tornado last

November now almost rebuilt

Masonic nest of brick and mortar

Planted in the earth of Tazewell county.

 

Like Socrates (the philosopher)

 I couldn’t help but be around

You in the Athens of late-80’s video stores.

Shouting Good morning to war I no

Longer believed in, licking the ash

Flecks of dead poets like cocaine

Mortgaging rosebud calendar squares.

Scaling the podium of my classroom

Desk, naked, with a copy of Leave of Grass

 

To Tell you how much I love

 

Sucking helium out of Aladdin’s lamp

Kiss the white soda of your lips

Until a resuscitating caricatured hiccup

 Attired cartoon-voice yawns into

Awakenings of chartered time, this never

Neverland prodigal shadow of reality

Faceless tint the valence heckles

Faces of the crowd from somewhere beyond.

 

How I wanted to hold you

Sit next to you

 

Lodged in a therapist’s office

Extrapolating romantic theorems of loss

With mathematical savants

Sitting next to the person

Who has no friends at AA

Meeting just to make them feel

Special, flus Pomegranate grin

Death, incumbent, arriving

When we least expect it a

Viable canvas of impressionistic

Painting, the light bulb scalp

Eight year leukemia patient

 Smiling when the Doctor walks in.

 

Looking for you now even today still,

 

Traipsing the streets of San Francisco

clad in Geriatric drag

Simply to see forehead of someone we  once were

 

Hoping I would somehow find you once again

 

Skirting the womb of the Universe in an  roc’s auk  egg

Thinking how sometimes, in life,

You just have to make silly voices

At times when you feel no one

 is paying attention, laughing

at the loss, subtle disintegration of our body

Keening what dreams of Jest that

somehow yet may come

 Infinite borne on the back a thousand times

Saying alas, I knew him all too well.