AFTERWORLD

Stephen Gibson

for John Neff (1971-1997)

You have opened your mouth and tasted the dark chimneys of bitterness
But don't be distressed.
You've done so much since you lay down on that bathroom floor
And floated away from us in your twenty-sixth year.
Here, now, the acorns have started falling from high trees
In the parks downtown and wet leaves are
Plastered to the sidewalks,
Black mouths that still want you to answer them.
There is my memory of you walking around
Like a ghost with a cowboy hat on, past the closed strip-joints,
Into shitty bars, of you swimming in the post-hurricane sea...
And on clear nights, there is also the vicious white breath
Of stars, anchored in the night by their silence.
How many miles of that did you pass through, traveling on your back
Through the sky?
Always in my life it seems there have been people so far from me
That I could never find them,
But since you are gone it turns out
That I can find you everywhere--
In your girlfriend's kiss.
In the cold metalic taste of beer from this can.
Even in the city skyline that shrinks on autumn evenings
So that it appears to become just a little diarama
Lit by imaginary lights.
And what do I have to say that I consider so important
That I am writing to someone who will never truly re-appear?
That by saying this, it is happening, that by saying this
You are listening?