Confessions

—in memory of Tom Andrews (1961–2001)

Once I knew a smart boy who thought I was stupid.He wrote poetry about Augustine, and then he died,

a hemophiliac, his bloody joints steeped in codeine,liver cells swollen as semicolons.

Motocross was his roaring act of self-defiance.He popped wheelchair wheelies,

shredded the dirt-bike earth into a fine body of light,diaries rendered in typeset glory

while his mother begged forgivenessfor the sin of her blue blood womb.

Death in his back pocket,he traded fate like baseball cards

in the wormy backyard of a Michigan summer.Fraternal blood bond, his brother went first,

same year I met him.I'm still here, adjusting the clench of my jaw,

reading St. Augustine on the futility of prayer,on eternity, how it never gives in,

guilty of findingstupidity where a smart boy saw only God.