TRAGIC Poem: Will be Done, by Tom Hunley

(for Will Brown)

You were my student and I failed you.
And I’ve failed others.
Like the freshman, late for class,

music audible despite headphones,
who disrupted our reading of “Do Not
Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”

Did you rage as day broke with its peach light, Will?
Sometimes, to write a poem, you had to go places
so dark and so silent you fell and kept falling.

On your way back to yourself,
you got lost and we lost you.
We missed you during the final, Will.

Nothing’s more final than this death.
Will, this poem isn’t really for you.
It’s for everyone left.

I’m using a device called apostrophe.
As if you’re the urn, not the ashes.
As if you’re Autumn, not the fallen.

But you knew that already.
We covered it in class.
While you were still with us.

Before I smelled booze on your breath.
At two pm. Outside my office.
Before the incompletes.

Before your freshmen complained that you kept missing class.
That they missed you. I miss you.
Your life was incomplete, Will. You didn’t fail.

Will you wake in another world among the stars?
Will it feel strange not having the darkness you’re used to?
The darkness you used to carry everywhere?

There’s light in this puddle and my face in this puddle
and when I step, there’s a splash and the light goes away
and my face goes away but both return.

The light will never return to your face.
Your face will never return
to any puddle or mirror or classroom.

Everybody left came back.
You left and will not come back.
The bullet left the gun like curses from a mouth

that would eat them whole to take them back, but can’t.
I’m fighting my demons, you wrote to me.
You lost your way and your battle and you broke

like one of your bottles, spirits spilling
out of every shattered, unswept piece of you.
I lost Nashville and Tennessee in my rear view mirror

and stanzas I wrote in my head but not on paper
and you, lost like Atlantis, like an old man’s memories,
like a wallet, snatched away on the first night in a city far from home.

I never bought that PRS Starla we checked out together
at Royal Music, and now I never will.
You said It’s expensive. I said It’s overpriced.

You said I could never afford it. I said My wife would never allow it.
But we both loved the bird inlays on the fretboard.
Now when I visit the music store, the birds

shriek as if impaled, kabobbed.
If I touch the guitar it will scream
every caged sound you never let out.

Every day now I listen to David Bowie sing
“Rock And Roll Suicide.” You’re not alone, he sings.
I wish I’d said that. I’ve had my share, Will.

There’s a D9 chord in that song, Will.
I wish you were here to show me how to finger it.
You and your girlfriend never did come over for dinner.

Now you never will. My wife makes this teriyaki steak.
It tastes amazing. It tastes like love feels.
It tastes like the most beautiful song you ever heard.

I just re-viewed Pump Up The Volume.
Christian Slater’s underground DJ character talks on air
with a suicidal teen. The next night

he lights candles, plays “If It Be Your Will”
by Leonard Cohen, and weeps: I never said “Don’t do it.”
I never said that. I never said You’re not alone.

I’m not really talking to you, Will.
I’d just as well talk to the West Wind or an artichoke.
Everyone left, I’m talking to you. Don’t leave.

You’re not alone. You’re not alone. You’re not alone.