TWO SUICIDES AND A KICK IN THE HEAD

Water and Sky / 2022 / Photo by RCS

All I knew about Billy, who would’ve been Uncle Billy had he lived, was that he came back to the family farm after World War II. A few weeks passed. Then, he picked up a loaded shotgun, walked out to the barn on a warm spring morning, and blew his brains out. I heard this at the dinner table in Florida, when I was a kid. Hundreds of miles away from where the tragedy happened, in the backwoods of North Carolina. I saw a sepia-colored photograph of Billy once. Staring out of the photo, he looked no older than 19. Over the years, not much more was said. It was hinted at that the war made him commit suicide. I always suspected there was more to it. As in, he left the mess for someone else to clean up. Sends a pretty clear message, if you ask me. Same thing my Uncle Glen did, when he blew his brains out on the day I arrived in New York City to go to art school at The Art Students League. We’d driven across the state many times, to visit Uncle Glen, his wife Jasmine, and their adopted daughter, Yuki, in Vero Beach. A more nervous person I’ve never known. The chainsaw killer I sat next to in the Eighth Grade, John Goss, was similarly nervous. But his violence wasn’t the inner-directed type. Probably be hard to kill oneself with a chainsaw. Although, it’s probably been done. Uncle Glen blew his brains out in the bathtub, leaving the bloody mess for his wife, Jasmine, to clean up. A clearer message doesn’t exist. On my mother’s side of the family, the one guy I wondered about represented a branch of the family tree that was destined never to branch out. Michael, a distant uncle, who, on a long-ago morning in upstate New York, sometime in the 1700s, went out to feed the horses in the barn. One of the horses had a different idea. He kicked Uncle Michael in the head. Died instantly. I remember arriving at Penn Station through the long, dark, underground train tunnel that begins in New Jersey and ends in midtown Manhattan. I walked upstairs, and went outside onto Eighth Avenue, feeling the late-May, mid-morning energy of humanity all around me. Twenty minutes later, I checked into the West Side Y, and put my bags and my ten-speed bike into my room. Then, I walked half a block to Central Park, and spent several hours wandering through the park – past lakes, bridges, and trees with autumn leaves – feeling the ground beneath my feet. Around 6:00 o’clock that evening I was on the lobby payphone, calling mom to let her know I’d arrived,  and was settled in at the Y. She told me the news about Uncle Glen. I said, “Wow. Damn. Sorry to hear about it. He was always so nervous.”

I’m putting together an eBook of my Internet Poems, Prose Poems, and Noir Prose Poems, among others types of poems. More info as this project progresses.