Max Heinegg

Two Reasons

He says he wants to give us something to think about
before we leave, & plays “A Friend of the Devil”
from Skeletons in the Closet. You know the one,
rose on the record, red hand on the wrist.

Helen Vendler said she wasn’t a poet because things didn’t hit
her on two levels. She passed, but her name stays
musical. Hear the resonance of the world talking
to us & not. The structure of the brain forces the room

to be a story: the well-kept records, his beautiful speakers,
the gaunt child swearing at me. Brutus & Cassius,
two dogs penned in the porch’s makeshift kennel,
& the dopeshow of Schenectady going on, trying

to decide if it’s going to live or die. Shilly-shallying with
the question, as Wilde wrote & Dame Judi delivered.
Maybe, it’s high time we made up our minds which
of our imagined friends it’s time to explode.

I’m no longer comfortable in my old town,
the night spent across the street from a murder.
A year to the day, the killers returned to firebomb the house.
Once, they called it The Electric City. Some blame taxes

on businesses, some Cuomo, GE taking its ball & leaving,
but here we are, still with The Joker, Venus, & The Dead.
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight.
For an old friend, we’ll take the time. Take the time.

Cutting the Song

For Ian

I remember him lighting a joint between my takes,
patient voice in the cans, interrupting gently,
Again, when I botched the chords.

When asked, his Telecaster eddied
on a delay pedal, conjuring the Edge
in 2003, when rock was still our altar.

He secreted my daughter’s ultrasound
into an outro so subtly only we knew it was there.
Today, I found myself by his apartment

just as the radio deigned the ghostly chords
in the intro to “Purple Rain.” I parked to pair
memory to the solo we’d known since 1984,

the five notes Prince echoed in falsetto,
but the DJ rode the fader and the ads came on
before any catharsis. A friend’s death

feels like a killing.
Though I deny the fates,
I still believe in threads and strings.

 

Max Heinegg is the author of Good Harbor, Going There, and Keepers of the House, all on Lily Poetry Press. He is the Poet Laureate of Medford, MA. Connect with him on the web at www.maxheinegg.com