For the last day and a half
I’ve been listening to my
“Crazy chicks kick ass”
playlist in itunes
Listening over and over
to some variable stylings
Of Anger at a System
of a culture
that calls us crazy
That calls our expression
of the realities of that Culture’s
Consequences lies
and shows us to the door
with baggies of scripts
to fill so that their hour once a week
is enough to keep us breathing
without having to deal with us.

Fiona, “Keen”, Emilie
With Pianos, Synthed Drum beats
or violin wailings over
Truth tellings before we
Let ourselves collapse
or survive in haze
of “just try” and “irrational”
and “You’re so pretty when you cry
(for me, on my stage)”
Pulsed beat bringing my round
to remembered word beat readings
recorded and laid Bare by our
sisters in crazy-hood on
Coffee sticky stages and
beer soaked carpets TO dampen the
screams of our ongoing 
protestations for not-crazy people to 
Clap at and call us brave and “artistes” 

A kid named Wendel died this year.

My mother told me
and we both thought it was the Wendel  
Who sat Quietly with a guitar
Around a Camfire and
laughed like it was a shock
when anyone talked to him-
My mother called him my “friend”
But really he has always been
someone I was in awe of.

We learned it was another Wendel
though. (How many kids
our age in our tiny town
could possibly have parents
enamored enough of Thoreau
to name their kid Wendel?)

It was someone my brother had
Seen around at parties
and smiled at sitting in
back corners, half uninvited
in presentation.

His parents called my brother
asking him to speak at the funeral
That he was Wendel’s Best Friend-
Capitals intended- That they had 
heard endless stories of “WILL”
who was so awesome, so
amazing, So everything this
Wendel admired.

I Think This Wendel-
stranger Wendel is how he is in my head-
must have sat in smokey room backs
and laughed at Will’s jokes
and watched my brother
make rounds of his social magic
drawing the rooms in to him
so that all the room felt
connected to him somehow.

(I Think he must not have had
chance to see Will’s brutality
Directed to himself,
The way he knows to judge
the rooms to find  what
words are slurs or punchlines
and use them on the
right target to get what he wants.)

My brother Bewildered accepted
Their request for words.
But when he calls my mother, he
is confused because
he barely knew Wendel.
My mother tells me his
baffled dread of standing up
and telling the world about
a Boy he barely knew
as that boy’s Best friend.

I can only half believe
the grief and humanity that
my mother relays in the car, hushed toned,
ascribed to my Brother. The regrets
the feeling of guilt- that he could have
“saved” this kid, that maybe had he
only realized his locus in the
world of this Wendel.

I wonder if it is possible
as I’ve never seen regretful
word from him after his
driving me down into self
destruction again
Without it being grudged
slowly by the words of my mother
hushed toned in cars.