More lilies in a poem

Today, Rain over New York

You will scream at me from the truck of heaven
Hey Byoodeefoool
Yeah you gorgeous you

With the wispy pony tail and the maniacly thin face
Baseball cap
The teeth so much you and everything long
and thin and strung like wires

Dirty Pablo after days of sweating and planting
other people’s gardens
Screaming always from the window of the truck
Banshee yelping

Daughter a picture far away
Puerto Rico far away

Puerto Rico Babee
She’s byoodeeful too!

And me knowing nothing more and not asking
And not even thinking for years
About Pablo

So

To know
that three weeks ago you killed yourself
Is a sweeping of time and a rushing of too-lateness
And an unimaginable putting together of where you were
And what you did
And why

And how come the police called Nick and not your ex-wife
And how old is your daughter now
And what happened Pablo

Did you know I liked you, ever
Would it have made a difference

Have you rested
Were you tired
Could I have helped
Are you laughing now to see us thinking about you
when we never said or called or thought

Because we are separate and alone in ourselves
and cannot imagine the other life passed

It’s not so bad here Pablo
We’ve all thought of it

It passes

I could have told you that at least
It passes it will pass
And this too shall pass, Pablo

And I had my mother to tell me that
Regardless of knowing, I heard
It will pass

It would have
Whatever it was
Unless you killed someone unless you maimed and destroyed

But if it was your pain your loss your maiming and your heart-death
it would have passed I swear it
Even if you think not thinking that you can never go through it again
the body lasts man
It goes limping on even when the eyes have given up working and the heart is a hollow

But you did it
No talking
Or did you talk
Where were you
In a room
A shaft a track
Was there blood did you drink pills
We know nothing

None of the family phone numbers in your book worked
So they found Nick

And today, after years I found Nick and said
I want to listen to your music and we talked
and he told me about Pablo

Three weeks ago was the Fourth of July
and I was on a roof
with someone new and something beginning
New pain all over again you may laugh
and it is probably true

While somewhere
in this city in these lights
was it night
you let the life out
and went to sleep

Was it that night
of fireworks and people together
Was it because there was no one
Was it the holiday blues hanging over the sullen never leaving pain
Was it a rocket and the smell of gunpowder
as I watched the whole city
and watching felt nothing for a life
creeping beneath the floorboards into the foundations of the place

But you look for meaning, Byoodeeful, where there is none
If anythi’ mean’ t’ anythi'
I wou’ still be here

Your truck streams past devil Pablo
Head hanging like a mad dog’s
in the wind
Teeth spread in smiling and yipping
Yeeeeeeehaw

Damn, Pablo

For you the water
standing on the terrace
For you the white Formosa lilies growing, wet
like the ones I carried in rain last night
through streaming streets
For you the pale green rosebud forming

Pablito.