For Vivian

I
I just learned that my friends are dead
9 of ‘em in burning shadow-clocked mobile homes
Blazing early morning mourning about 5:30
And three of ‘em, tripped sticks, xanax eyes and booze-limbered bodies
Confused by the distorted turn of the loquacious night, so innocent and fun
Three of ‘em shouldered the door wide open and fell hard on the semi wet grass and slightly chilled air of the early morning Texas lake-side weathered turf
But this morning was not dewy and chilled
They fell to the earth, and landed on embers and char
Inhaled the chilled fresh air, but coughed up soot and smoke and the taste of campfire
Looked back and saw no lakeside, but a great big, bright home
All covered in catastrophe and ugly, depressing, life-changing wake-up calls
Not thinking party thoughts of comedy and good times and, “haha hey he just fell on the ground”
But instead, “oh no, my friends are in there”
And the friends
Jesus, the friends
What they were thinking, none of us could ever comprehend in a thousand burning comprehensions
Of understanding…
…Understanding

II
Burnt are the images the three won’t forget
And their regret is for sure a lasting ember
Burnt is the mobile home: a hell-like coffin
A scalding smothering with dragon-breath eye drops
The carbon of six destroyed families
Those poor families
And six remaining diplomas on graduation day
Burnt is the grass
The dew is back in the atmosphere
And the chilled air is somewhere else
Drifting calmly past random people, unaware of the dead bodies they’re breathing in

III
The fear in the three will be explained in great detail
And the fear of the six
That’ll only be expressed through imagination
All the last-calls and I’m-gonna-get-outa-here-in-a-fews
The three condemned to last in clandestine denial, staring past the hypnotic, vacillating fire
Confused in their jaded states
The apathetic medics who don’t think twice about what they’re doing
Not that they should
But that’s how infinitesimal it is
To them
And to us it’s a great misfortune of random events all cluster-fucked together, so rapid and random
And I was on the phone with somebody else, having regular conversations
Unbeknownst to the cloud of smoke that blinded God for an hour
I feel like that and I wasn’t even there

IV
Six of my friends burned to death this morning, one of them so very dear to me
They weren’t bad people
They weren’t great people
But they weren’t normal people
They were my people as I am theirs
And we will never talk to each other ever again
Because they’re dead
They burned to death
While I slept in my bed
Snoring with my two dogs
With the television on and the light off and the window shut and locked
And six of my friends burned to death

Vivian Rodriguez is back...going to PH tonight...is you goin'?

-Jon Rockefeller
03/06/2011