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Click here to return to previous page.BrotherKeeper
It's lots and lots of people that's been killed, just part
of day-to-day life here in the Ida B. Wells Project, looks
like, you know, a 14-story cemetery.
Lloyd Newman, 10th grade
LeAlan Jones, 11th grade
On Thursday, October 13, 1994, Eric Morse, aged five,
was dropped to his death. Derrick Morse,
his eight-year-old brother,
tried to save him. Chicago boys I never knew, who
will not let go. It's like that.
In my dreams, I do not see him fall,
a movie doll dropped for our sadistic thrill,
and I refuse even to think
of screams. But what I do keep seeing
is Derrick whip-slipping down stairs
floor to
floor
down
blurred banisters
two
three
steps at a time down
14 floors
my brother is
falling
is
like drowning
I came close once, flailing in a lake's mud bottom
imagining my cries would rise
in cartoon balloon bubbles to burst Help!
in that far blue sky water ceiling, but what saved
was not a word but a brother's hand that grabbed
dragged up to air
but air cares even less
than water, lets you
slip through,
without even a wake
to mark your passing
and because Eric will not steal
candy for the ten-year-olds, they
dangle him from a 14th floor window
and Derrick grabs and gets him
until one of them bites his hand
and he has to let go
so
he races
for the stairs
I can catch him
I can catch
him I can
catch him
I can
be
there
before
he
hits
the
ground
their defense attorney said
I don't care how big, how mean they want to be,
five minutes and you're talking to little boys,
and every one of them . . . they're all savable
every one of them
except this one
falling
14 stories
14 flights
14 floors
catch
him
Blues
1.
There's a song so sad, Mama said, they can't play it
on the radio. People jump out of windows
when they hear it.
It could be true, like when
she'd sing Put My Little Shoes Away—a lullaby
about a dying little boy, and I'd cover my ears
and her mouth to stop her—and she'd just nibble
my fingers and laugh.
I don't remember how
we got our hands on that record, Gloomy Sunday,
but one afternoon Billie Holiday was up there
with me and my buddy Tommy in his tiny attic room,
her voice falling
and falling, like tears, three
at a time. We listened hard, one eye on each other
and one on the square light of the one window, waiting
to see if the song really worked.
2.
In '66, at Big John's on Wells in Chicago,
it's three in the morning, Sunday morning, and I
don't know why I'm still here. Everyone I came with
is gone, and Howlin' Wolf is not on stage anymore.
He's crossed the room on his knees, dragging the snake
tail of his mic and now he's kneeling at my table,
at my feet, and I can't tear my eyes away from his,
his cheeks streaked, blue track-shining in the spot,
and I want to touch his round red mouth to stop him
'cause I think he's dying, and I don't know what to do.
What Celibacy Is
. . . And there be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs
for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it,
let him receive it. (Matthew 19:12)
If this is what
it costs to hold
at heart a hollow
where no sparrow
lives (nothing alive
that needs light),
if this is what God
expects from Yes,
then it is too much
today, although
I pay it anyway.
Again. Some heroic
souls, though few,
I expect, accept
such terms without
complaint: those
who, full of You
to breaking, can
cut off every
other thing and
one, swallow
pain like wine,
smiling, drugged
on purest Spirit,
proof that You
exist, the mere dregs
of You enough
to feel or fill
another day. But
this hole in me
is not wholly
holy yet (if ever
it will be), is still
child-round and
lover-shaped
by someone as like
yet utterly unlike
me as I am like
and utterly other
than You, who
haunt and echo-
ache in that space
You claim
to hallow, but
which feels
merely hollow.
Will I now
meet You here?