Kansas City Monday Night Rain

by Jeff M
I'd like to write something this rainy Kansas City evening, but I can't seem to tap the stream that runs in me. I think I will post yet another poem written by my dear brother, Skip. It's going on three years since his passing, and I miss him more and more each day. I can still remember being eight year's old and begging him to take me to Dairy Queen on his 10-speed bike. He'd grudgingly agree and I would stand in the doorway of the garage and watch him back out the bike from where it was parked alongside the car. It was a blue bike and I remember the way it leaned against the chimney bricks, the ones that came up from the earth, from where the opening opened in the basement room below our feet, where he would sit and read his books of Greek tragedy, play soldiers, watch his favorite football team, the Kansas City Chiefs. Where our mother drank. He would back the bike out and smack it with his hand and I'd come down the plank of wood that lay across the deep chasm that led down into the basement, this plank of wood that never gave way our weight, never broke, this plank that was metaphor for all us children growing up in that house, that house of rot, of booze, of money-stink, of words always thought but never said, of secrets we all held, secrets that made my mother rock back and forth in her chair almost 20 years later, the night I drove out to their home to tell them that their son, their 42-year old son was dead, her words thick and I'd like to think full of great remorse but just words, the words "You don't know, you don't know." But I knew then that he was my brother, and he would lean the bike over and let me climb on it and he'd get on and start pedaling and take us up the road and away from the house to the Dairy Queen, up Bellflower Avenue, beneath the dogwood trees and the blossoms and my arms holding his skinny waist hard, his bones I feel, holding him, smelling dryer sheet scents and maybe cigarettes and watching the trees go by and the cars and the world impossibly huge and frightening and I was in it and my brother was in it and it was hard to imagine him not being in it. We would eat our ice cream cones by the highway. I would always order a chocolate cone. We didn't talk much. We were silent most of the time. I just wanted the ice cream, and he wanted to be away from the house. We'd get back on the bike and head home and I'd hold on to his waist again for dear life, and as he leaned into the left hand curve, into the driveway, I always thought we'd crash and go falling but we never did and that was why I thought he was magical, my big brother. Why did you have to be alone when you died?


ODE ON A FRIEND
by Skip Martin

Slicing garlic. Last of the olive oil. Radio static.
Today the rain poured the clouds indoors.
I remember whole days, years ago, when weather
cloistered us together in your close attic room:
snow thawed our secrets; rained pooled laughter.
Yesterday I went downstairs to get the mail
and, between all that sun and those missing children,
it hardly seemed worth the climb back up.
Sharing these thoughts with my wife doesn't seem right.
Do you remember that little white cedar bridge in the park?
That irritable snapping turtle that owned its shade.
Remember the mossy rock that halved the stream; slipping
off and pulling ourselves back up by the pine branch, its
impossible, sweet glue?
That girl? Those big green eyes, small red shorts.
The aching hum of her fast metal skates.
How is your family? Do you have a family?
My wife's eyes are brown. She is quiet much of the time.
Tomorrow they're calling for even more rain.
Be well. I think of you often. Tell me your name.