Angels and Pigeons

One morning he says, I haven’t seen angels all week.
Before, he could hear their blessings every morning
when the pigeons stirred, purling and flapping in the air shaft.
There were two crypts, and he had a foot in each.

Crypt #1
Cryptosporidium: contagious, often attributed to tainted water.
No matter that he drank only Poland Springs
the waterborne microbe gripped his bowels.
In truth, he knew well, this bug was also transmitted by rimming—
a sexual act he was ardently fond of.
As if in manifest response to stolen pleasure
he suffered profuse diarrhea for years.
A phrase that deserves to be repeated, to sink fully into consciousness:
He suffered profuse diarrhea for years.
For most, a brief illness, but not for those bereft of immunity.
He was painfully thin. Thankfully, the remedy was benign.
Medicine did not deter this protozoa. The only salve was
soothing the voracious appetite left in the wake of malnutrition.
Eating became therapy, another religious act.

Crypt #2:
I’m losing this battle to pigeons, he said.
Cryptococcus: a fungus
with a predilection for the brain.
A fungus growing on offal
tossed onto the street
and swallowed by pigeons.

A fungus
that descended with droppings
that mixed with the dirt
that settled in the airshaft
that rose as fairy-dust
(when wings fluttered)
that Jon breathed in
that entered his lungs
that surged through his bloodstream
and settled in his brain.

When the headaches came,
the sign was two fingers tapping
alongside the temple.
The symptoms were projectile vomiting
and later, seizures.
The symbol was hearing angels.
This was a less benign infection
and the remedy was dreadful.
There were spinal taps every week.
A fact that bears repeating, with mindfulness.
There were spinal taps every week.

Then, suddenly, he says, I haven’t heard angels all week.
This happened in June.

Holy War

Those candles—white fat columns
red 7-day burners in tall glass jars with pictures of martyrs.
Ornate tiny picture frames housing demons, gods, and holy men.
A postcard of Shiva, wearing tiger skin and serpent necklace
dancing his celestial dance atop a dwarf-demon.

Shiva—god of death and demons, release and rebirth.
This god, with four arms, moon hair, a third eye
drank a draught of poison from the great sea
to save the world from harm
but could not swallow
all the body fluids you were drowning in.

It was demons you were searching for, wasn't it?
Red-faced, gothic demons that stalked your dreams, possessed your body.
The demons of desire and disappointment, doubt and betrayal, isolation and terror,
pain and death.

The demon of family.
The demon of masturbation.
The demon of homosexuality.
The demon of cocaine.
The demon of AIDS.
The demon of kidney stones.
The demon of diarrhea.
The demon of headaches.
The demon of spinal taps.

Let Shiva come now and dance upon these demons.

Betrayal

Here was the hardest moment for me:
when it became unsafe to continue to treat him any longer in his own home. His own bed. His own bathroom. His kitchen. His altar. His organic food. Gallons of Poland Springs water. His books. His favorite arias playing. Tons of beads. Incense and candles. Living among his own angels.

Do you remember the summer of 1993?
It was the hottest summer ever
and for $424/month, you don't get air conditioning.
But this was his home, his familiar.

Two sickening infusions a day, projectile vomiting from intracranial pressure, horrific headaches, bouts of mania—these we could handle. A schedule of shifts, someone always with him—this we could do. But he was having seizures, and no one noticed. They were subtle at first, a posture—decorticate—arms flexed, fists clenched, wrists touching. His friends said, He must have been sleeping, and then he pissed in the bed. This—we couldn't handle.

Paul, the good doctor, bless his soul, loved Jon.
But that night—it was July 2^nd— when he came to the apartment
to conference, to make a plan, to take the next step—
he looked straight-faced into Jon's eyes, and said (I will never forget this):

     Jon, you’re looking better.
     Really?
     Yes, I think so. Yes.

I interjected: We can’t continue this at home.
I stated the facts: Paul, he’s having seizures now.
I said plainly (I'll never forget this):

     If you want to stop treatment
     If you want to die at home
     We can stay here
     Otherwise
     We go to the hospital.

Jon said:

     I don’t want to stop the treatment.
     I don’t want to go into the hospital.

He looked at Paul. He looked at me.

     Traitors, he whispered, vehemently.

Ascension

When does a man become a saint?
Is it on an afternoon when
wearied and disrobed—twitching
pains from groin to toes—
he solemnly ascends the stairs
from the 5^th floor to the 7^th
and then, up another narrow staircase
where a door opens to the asphalt threshold?

It is April, the resurrection of spring.
three months to go
From the rooftop, the city is benevolent.
His vision, a backdrop of building crests against a blue tableau.
Heaven sighs and hearkens.
He spreads a towel
drapes it with his hallowed body.
He is so thin, no doubt cold, yet
his eyes dilate towards paradise
and he comes in a burst.

Hallelujah!

As it happens, we miss the significance.
Like any martyr, he is alone.
His own people don’t understand.
He is feverish and confused.
The sun is cloistered and we are embarrassed
when he informs us, I have fucked God.

For this is all the time he has
the only holy act he can perform
the sole blessing he will receive.
As it is with saints, he is canonized only after death.

Before you stopped speaking, you were light enough
for me to carry from bed to bathroom.
The last words you spoke to me were:
Shut up Risa.
Some said we were like an old married couple.
But we weren’t old and the bitterness
of your death shrouded everything.

For weeks, I sensed that I was the only one
who knew that you were dying.
My acceptance and your denial replaced
your acceptance and my denial.
Our old ruse—changing positions, mid argument.
It felt so unfair when you appeared to absolve
everyone from your anger but me.
I swallowed all of your fury.

Lord, I miss you so.
Why couldn’t you hold me and rage at God?

Last Rites

Unconscious, he had a large following.
Three days he lay in the state called coma, as mourners passed by.
He gestured towards heaven and grabbed at his catheter
while worshipers came into and out of the hospital room
restlessly eating Thai food and chattering carelessly.
The woman who was soon to become my ex-lover
was solemnly watching our life unfold around his hospital bed.
The woman who was soon to become her new lover
flitted by like a screen memory.
Jon’s brother, Neil, came with his ex-boyfriend Frank, who died shortly.
Change was in the atmosphere.
Not one of us could manage to hold on to another.

The plane set down at 11:00 PM. He died at 11:35.
His parents couldn’t have arrived at a better time or at a worse time.
We had already finished off the first bottle of scotch
as he lay in the state of the just-dead.

On the day after you left
we sat in your vacated apartment—
your father, your mother, and I.
Among the thoughtless things they said
(utterances which seemed to arise directly from your sealed mouth)
your mother cursed me, bidding the evil eye to enter your home.
You stole him from me, she accused,
while your father appraised the stereo speakers.

Is this how they want to sit shiva, I wonder?
I hang a towel over the mirror.
I tear my tee shirt.
I sit on the floor.
Sitting, I think of the word, satsung. What is it, anyway?
I muse over the word shiva, the god Shiva, my God.
The God of the Old Testament. Elijah. Christ Jesus. Krishna. Buddha.
I try to line these men up on a time line. I add Mohammed.
I think of goddesses—Shakti and Sophia.
I recall a bit of obscure knowledge of Buddhist sky burial
ruminate over Jon’s requests to eat his body.
Can we even begin to share God?
This is what I want to know, while I am sitting with them.
Your father removed pictures from the walls
and noticed your things, in a way he had never
noticed you.

I think, They can’t wait to devour you.
To make you disappear inside of their bellies.
She would eat your body, he would drink your blood.

It is not difficult to imagine you rising, rising, rising.

Book of the Dead

You didn’t tell us what you wanted, dammit.
Or you did, and we didn’t believe you.
Did you really expect that we would build a bonfire in Thompkins Square Park and burn your body? Did you really believe that we could eat your freshly charred flesh? Did you think we knew anything about these customs? And yet...

I wish we hadn’t gotten drunk as you were hovering above your shell.
I wish we had read from the Bardo Thödol, and not moved your body for 3 days.
I wish we had covered your face with a white cloth.
I wish we had turned you onto your right side in the Lying Posture of a Lion.
I wish we had kept your family from weeping in your presence.
I wish we had heard and understood your instructions.
I wish you had been conscious of your dying.
I wish you had looked peaceful.
I wish your eyes had opened as you took in your last breath.
I wish you had taught us more, before you died.

The Buddha himself wrote nothing of his teachings.

Found Objects

After his parents plundered Jon's apartment
After friends and ex-lovers fondled his possessions
After his brothers and sister drained what solace they could of objects

I was left with these odd things:

• His bible, the book of Job, his bar mitzvah haftorah
• A large picture book: Demons, Gods, and Holy Men
• A framed image of Shiva dancing
• 6 journals: 1978-1980, 1980-1987,1987-1988, 1988-1991, 1992, 1992-1993.
• Scores of hardbacks—Woolf, Salinger, Genet, Pynchon, Lessing, Murdoch, Maughn, Chekov, Camus, Darwin, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, others
• 2 Passports
• 2 Yearbooks
• A slush pile of short stories
• His record collection—remember records?—a mix of show tunes, soul, and disco
• Identification cards: Henry Sibley Senior High School 1971-72; Social Security Card; University of Minnesota; New York State Department of Social Services
• Food Stamps totaling $8.50
• $21 in silver certificate U.S. dollars
• 1 transcript from Columbia University
• a shoebox filled with postcards, including 4 of Saint Sebastian
• an odd assortment of seemingly unrelated news clippings, such as this one, sans date, from the New York Times—

          2 Teen-age Children Are Held as Plotters of Father’s Murder

After Life

At first you see your dead friend all the time
walking down the street, turning the corner, slipping from your reach.
The lights blink during a brownout in summer, and you think it's him.
You saved his spinal fluid in a test tube placed inside a red carafe.
Pray to this clear, infectious fluid that he demanded to take home
from the doctor’s office because it was his.
Then one day, while cleaning, it drops onto the floor and the vessel breaks.
The clear fluid spills forth.
You anoint your head with his spinal fluid.
Lay a drop smack in the center of your forehead.

Years pass because they have no choice.
You wonder, what does this word pass mean?
The passage of birth.
The passing of a loved one.
Passing a test.
Making a pass.
I think I’ll pass on that.
He surpassed all of our expectations.
Still you wonder, where exactly is he?
You see him everywhere.

Readings From The Scriptures

Among the things I held on to were his journals. They began when he was 20, living in NYC, and continued, with sporadic entries, until 3 months before his death at age 37. I saved them, what else could I do? They were safe with me, would not leak their harsh ink, lash out hurtfully at others, or announce his defeats at the hands of family, authorities, comrades and lovers. They had lain untouched for 7 years, when a summons, like a foghorn, called me to give witness to his history, his dreams, his spiritual travels. The task of reading was formidable and tedious, as I turned traitor to the cause of containing his secrets. They were too familiar, too symbolic, too inevitable to remain buried and darkened. His words burst forth and opened my mouth, like a horde of alters, his handwriting shifting with his moods. It was a wild journey, the long-playing version of the condensed years of his illness.

• How he tricked for lira during the years he lived in Italy.
• His harsh denunciations of masturbation, calling it a sin.
• The sheer amount of coke and Rémy-Martin he consumed.
• A 4-year live-in love-relationship with a black man.
• Bouts of hepatitis and gonorrhea.
• A rather brutal rape.
• A brief affair with a woman, when he was 25.

(But this is not the point I wish to make. I don’t know what point I wish to make.
But not that his life was sordid and surprising. Yet it was.)

Perhaps it is this: From these writings, I feel obliged, yet reluctant, to expose his family afflictions, the torment that his writing revealed, his ultimate failure to heal these wounds. This pool of suffering, in which so many of us bathe regularly, was the most profound reality his journals described. Humiliated and abased by his father; enduring intrusive, self-involved demands of his mother; wariness and distance among 4 siblings who could not save each other—this was the content. Yet the delicate love for each one was as palpable as the grief, although better concealed.

(Do familial revelations provide something useful, worth revealing?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.)

Perhaps we read too many memoirs in the 90s
to heed the lessons they teach us.
Must we pass this torch on to the next generation?

Dear Jon,

These are things you should know.
In the Jewish tradition, I do not forget you.
Each year, I burn a candle of remembrance, every morning I say
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
In the Hindu tradition, I await your return to our planet
to honor the form of your reincarnation—
tiger cub, baby girl, Shiva’s son, perhaps a Maple sapling.
In the Buddhist tradition, I pray for good karma in your rebirth
and try to do no harm in my journey on earth.

In the Catholic tradition, I believe you are in heaven,
held in God's palm, or walking arm-in-arm with your brother Jesus.
I hear angels now and now I think I understand
what we could not understand when you took flight.

Every day, I miss you forever.

Love, Risa