Dead Spring

How fucking stupid is that title?
That’s got to be the cuntiest most unoriginal thing I’ve ever written
I bet there are a thousand shitty fake deep emo song-poems with that exact idiotic title
I hate it so much I think it’s perfect
I hate it so much I’m going to keep right on going
I need to write something with stupidity and hate in it tonight
I used to do it like this once
Long time ago
Before I decided shit needed to rhyme or have some kind of form
Fuck form
There is no form anymore
Everything is pulverized
Pulp in a hurricane
Do you remember that day in February when Mike “leave room for Jesus” Pence stood in front of the presidential seal and told us that there was no cause for alarm and that everything was going to be fine?
That was the moment I knew we were fucked
It took days
Not quite hours
But definitely not enough to say weeks
The planet melted like ice under a polar bear’s ass
Boris Johnson got sick and five days later his stupid haircut was in intensive care
He didn’t die
But that’s not the point
John Prine died
Maybe that was the point
It couldn’t be though because there is no fucking point
I think that’s why I’m having such a hard time with this
We all are
My mind is frayed rope
It’s chaos
Everything is chaos
Everyone’s narrative evaporated overnight
The entire global economy shit itself to death
People haven’t started dying yet
Not really
Not like they might
But we’re in this weird limbo
A fugue state full of demons
I keep thinking about Passover
God sent an angel to kill the firstborn of everyone who didn’t put lamb’s blood on their door
But this is worse
A lot worse
That was over in one night
This is different
There’s no reason
There’s no certainty
We don’t know who’s most at-risk or why
We don’t know if there’ll be a vaccine or when
We don’t know how long it lives outside the body
We don’t know how contagious it really is
We don’t know how to help
We don’t know what treatments work
We don’t know how long it’ll last
We don’t know what really happened in China
We don’t know anything
The Angel of Death is standing outside your door
Staring at the lintel
And you have no idea if he sees any lamb’s blood
Maybe he’ll come for you
Maybe someone else
But there’s no way to tell
Tom Hanks got better
Maybe Robert De Niro won’t
A lot of people won’t
It’s spring and the trees and flowers around my parent’s house are blooming
And it feels like the world is poisoned
I keep thinking about New York City
And about leaving New York City
I hate leaving New York City
My younger brother picked me up in a truck at one o’clock in the morning
In a rush
Fleeing
Like Passover
I didn’t sleep the whole night
At 7 AM I was back to work
This time in Virginia
I have no idea if I’ll ever go home again
I’ll go back someday but to what?
New York City is my heart
The heart of America
And it’s dying
It’s dying a bad hateful senseless death
And it’s killing me
Every day I wake up and I look for the city and it’s not there and I die a little
Which feels silly to say during a pandemic
When thousands of people are literally fighting for their lives
But I feel this
I feel this dying in my heart
I feel it in my breath
There is a pall of death over everything
And I can’t work
I can’t think
It’s chaos
The daily episodes of panic
Random waves of anxiety
Hopeless staring
Empty sunrise
There are so many projects I wanted to do
Screenplays
Movies
Books
Essays
Poems
All the passion and fire I used to have
Choking
Chaos death
I keep trying
Every day I keep trying
Trying to work and work out
Eat
Walk
Breathe
Think
But I’m dying
Everyone is dying
Nothing coheres
Yesterday was Easter
Which is supposed to be the beginning of Passover
But that’s a separate issue
Anyway
My younger brother set the house on fire
He set the house on fire on Easter Sunday
He’s been doing some e-commerce stuff and this guy filled out a shipping label wrong
And ICE sent my brother a Cease and Desist letter
Told him they’d seized his assets etc
My brother has been depressed because of a lot of other shit
So he hasn’t been talking a lot
The day before Easter he leaves the house to go for a walk
Dad gets mad that my brother won’t talk to him
And he knows my brother got this letter from ICE
Dad thinks maybe the letter is why he’s acting weird
So while my brother is out
Dad busts into my brother’s room and reads the letter
I found out and yelled at Dad to put it back
Next day I tell my brother
He freaks out
We grew up in a violent home
No peace
No privacy
No safety
This brings insecurity
Fear
Transgressions like this trigger him
My brother screams at Dad not to cross his boundaries
Dad won’t listen
Or say sorry
My father’s a little dick bitch about shit like this
You know what I mean
Barks like a rabid dog but never bit anyone in his life
My brother isn’t like that though
He bites
He goes into Dad’s room
Pulls out his t-shirt drawer
Flips white cotton everywhere
I’m staying between them trying to keep it from getting violent
Once a few years ago I remember they had a good fight
I counted fourteen bloody fist holes in the hallway after that one
That was before I moved to NYC
My brother drops the t-shirts and moves to the nightstand
Opens the top drawer
Pulls out a bottle of Astroglide
And a red light bulb
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!?
He makes his point
PUT THAT DOWN!
I hold them apart
OH AM I CROSSING YOUR BOUNDARIES!? AM I INVADING YOUR PRIVACY!?
It’s not subtle
Dad barks
Doesn’t apologize
I ask him to just acknowledge it
Just tell him that you hear him
Tell him that you see him
Tell him that his feelings are valid
Tell him that you understand
Try to understand
Rabid dog
Dad pushes me into the wall
I grab my brother to hold him back
He shoves Dad
I clamp my brother’s arms
Dad goes under the bed
Pulls out a revolver
Smith and Wesson
.357
My brother loses it
Calls him a pussy
Tells him to use it
SQUEEZE IT BITCH!
Dad waves the gun
None of us knows if it’s loaded
I WANT YOU BOTH OUT OF MY HOUSE
Dad still doesn’t see the irony
He never sees anything
Just keeps barking
My brother storms out
Goes to his room
Comes back with a flare gun
And bites
He throws a couple of lit M-80s under the back porch
And shoots the flare gun
I’m still talking to Dad
Trying to get him to put the gun away
He does
I check the porch
Smoke
I go down there
Open the door
Thick black dark
I cough
Suck air
Go inside
Turn around
Flames
OH FUCK
I yell up to Mom
She screams
Neighbor is washing his car
Doesn’t flinch
He was in Nam
Deaf as shit
I get a bucket
Fill it with water
My Dad comes out with a fire extinguisher
HOW DO YOU WORK THIS THING?
I pull the thing out of his hands
Rip the plastic off and squeeze
Burst of chalk
My brother comes through the cloud in his gas mask
Grabs the extinguisher
Goes in
Puts it out
Dad’s still barking
Making threats
I dump the bucket
Coughing chalk
Laughing my ass off
Dad drives off
Steven and I watch the smoke
Sitting there
In the sunshine
Laughing
Mom scowls at us from the back porch
Dad calls us crying
Says he’s sorry
Says he loves us
Says he’s got Ben and Jerry’s
Wants to eat it with us
So
This fucker comes home with six pints for four people
And we sit on the back porch
Eating ice cream
With smoke coming out from under the porch
And the sun on our faces
And nobody learned anything
Nothing made sense
Nothing was gained
It was Passover
Easter Sunday
And I’m sure there was a fucking point
Somewhere
But Jesus Christ
I don’t know what the fuck it is
That’s why I wrote this
I don’t think there’s a point
There’s no point to any of this
Some Goddamn bastard fucked up in a lab in China and the entire planet went to Hell
That’s all it is
My Dad fucked with my brother’s shit so he set the fucking house on fire on Easter morning
So what?
You think I can explain this shit?
Go fuck yourself
No one’s going to explain anything
No one knows shit
The president is a reality star
Fuck it
Ask Joe Exotic if you want some answers
He’s more mentally stable than Joe Biden
And you know it
So fuck it
Fuck you
Chaos reigns
The angel of death is staring at your lintel
And no power on Earth is going to make him leave
God’s not going to answer your prayers
He’s not going to get us out of this one
The Pope even canceled Jesus this year
But it doesn’t mean anything
It doesn’t cohere
It’s Bergman
It’s Kobe Bryant’s helicopter
Max Von Sydow died
Then the black plague came back
And no one put blood on their door
But even if we had
It wouldn’t matter
Anyway
This is called dead spring
Because I hate it
I’m so Goddamned angry
Do you remember that day in February that Mike “leave room for Jesus” Pence stood in front of some flags and the presidential seal and told us that there was no cause for alarm and that everything was going to be fine?
That scared me
Seeing my house on fire didn’t but that did
The last time I saw something on TV that scared me like that I was nine years old watching the twin towers collapse like a lump of ashes
I didn’t live in New York then
I guess I don’t live in New York now either
But If I get this shit and I’m dying I’m not going to the fucking hospital
I’m going back to New York City
I’m going back to Manhattan
To jump into the craters where the towers used to be
And most people won’t get it but New Yorkers will know
They won’t know what to do about it but they’ll know
They’ll hear and they’ll know
And they’ll say

it was a dead spring