Why Won´t He Wake Up?

Sigh, I embrace the intensity of this piece.
But in the end, we can only be responsible for our selves.
I feel for your friend and am sorry for his loss.

Beautifully executed - My heart breaks for anyone who leaves this way - thankful for friends who can make their lives have a lesson - have a voice, have a face, have a feeling. Thank you John for caring. Salud.

John, I am also sorry for what has happened. It is tragic to lose anyone like this, with no hope of ever coming to terms with the 'why's?' that follow.
Brian, our sympathies are with you, and with the family of your friend at this time.

John, you have given us a raw, bleeding , biting poem. It springs shock and fear in the lamp-less boulevards where you take us. The dark lives of children lost to light, the graffiti scrawled walls of hell..where beastly demons lurk with innocent ignorance.
A world which we do not see, but when we do, it shakes us out of a stupor...it exists.
I cannot fully express how hard this poem hit me. Considering the context in which you wrote it, I can sense the helplessness of a person who asks,' Why hasn't my sad comrade arrived yet?'
The first line alone seems to have a big, dark, fearful belly of the unknown compressed right there. I will be reading this poem several times, though there will be no other answers than, sleep.

John, you bring us to this crucible of desperation with such stark, expressive language in a painting of dark transparency. Our powers of comprehension are tested to the full and must return again and again to assimilate this tragic event. You help us to envision stages of grief in this subterranean chamber of travail. Beyond the contemplation of insidious darkness, we sense your compassionate embrace of Brian's (and the world's) loss. I must echo Minnie's perceptive, deeply heart-felt remarks above. She speaks for many of us.

There is a comprehensive understanding contained within this poem which seemingly belies analysis. Yet you have spoken so that ultimate peace may be made manifest in time's healing voice. This touches many places, many lives, many souls in mercy without end.

I really got lost in this one, John.
I forgot I was reading a poem and began to see the butterflies, graffitti and pit bull.
So many impact images and pitch perfect lines.

"Ending up like a hobo without his hat..." so simple yet elementaly feeble. The importance of the hat is a narrative in its self.

"When he urged you to visit him where nobody whistles anymore," Who needs to whistle when you've got headphones pumping 40,000+ songs ad-infinitum. Elaborating a tune you remember, so others can hear, is a responsibility of our grandfathers.

"Until it leaps forward, grinding incisors into rotten cellulose pulp." Vivid, wonderfully vivid.

John your poem hits the reader hard...after he has read of the suicide in your intro.

My first impression was of glittering dining rooms all over the country but in one room a gunshot rings out like a sad cathedral bell when a matador dies.

I immediately cry out why? why?... and then read your poem again. I read of the desolation and the starvation. Even the wooden posts have become rotten cellulose pulp. What did that man see and experience. What was his desolation and what was his hunger?

I read about your chalk line and know, with a previously unnoticed fear, that what seperates me from all this is merely a thin chalk line.

As you so wisely said yesterday on another thread, it's time to show love to those around us. Let's do that, John. All else is out of our hands.

John, I tried hard to set aside the circumstances involved with your dedication...but I do understand. My son-in-law's young brother shot himself through the head about eight months ago. The young man was in his early twenties.

Your title someone puzzled me until I read the lines:

Why hasn´t my sad comrade arrived yet?

....Who alive here will save the boy?¨

implying all sorts of things - for example, that the sad comrade is dead but present there as a ghost; and thereby answering the question posed in the title.

Yet there is more puzzlement - this whole poem has a surreal feel about it...and the line:

Will an E train....

hints that this whole episode is some sort of electronic simulation...a game. But with death and a ghost present as avatars who are actually real.

Having said that, I am confronted by the circumstances of the violent suicide and your, call for help, lethal instincts, addictions outcome when trying to understand what this poem is really saying.

The second person point of view, with very first two words ofYou, intruder launches us immediately into a stark and alienated world...a hostile ghetto, "where nobody whistles anymore" in order to meet a, "...desperate friend" who doesn't show. Instead, "...a screaming comes" - unexplained but seemingly from a waif with a pit bull.

I understand this being possibly as: the child is the friend who killed himself, and the fighting dog is alcoholism...with the setting being the isolation and alienation stemming from addiction. And yet the alcoholic observes this as from a distance, asks who still alive (as distinct from being the walking dead due to alcoholism) will save the essence of what still is him? Eternal sleep is what will release him.

And I'm probably totally of the track.

This is very powerful in its impact on me....I have walked the dark road beyond even depression...but God intervened and saved me from myself.

Terry, I appreciate so much your stopping by and taking on this piece´s shards of nightmare. You are right, people are responsible for their own decisions, which is why you can´t ´get sober´for someone else and also why no one can prevent a suicidal person from doing the worst possible thing, if they are committed to that action.

Mariana, I feel bad for the poor guy who took himself out, but I feel worse for his family and friends. My feelings of course start with my friend Brian, who´s been seriously hit by this tragedy, but you are right, once our feelings start to map the territory, we look for lessons. This poem embodies in a sense a terrible life lesson.

Minnie, your oh so responsive words really speak to me. I feel you read the poem deeply and ingested it, which is all I could hope for. Thank you, my dear.

Phoenix, this is the sort of commentary any kind of writer would like to receive at least once in their lives! Apollinaire is one of my favorite poets; I wish I could read French fluently instead of for the odd word, just so I could pore over ZONE, ALCOOLS and CALIGRAMMES. My friend Brian is actually a great fan of Apollinaire´s poetry, and I remember us reading this poet together in our rooms at Pomona College, twenty eight years ago.

wow...this is deep..
I am so sorry for this tragic lose..Yet you were able to format these feelings in a narrative form and let your thoughts pass through...well done!!

Thanks Glenn, for finding the intuition in this piece. I actually am not going to analyze this poem here, or offer interpretations. Already people have done this. I have simply tried to evoke a night journey for people to imagine their own scenarios at death´s terminus upon.

It pleases me to no end that you found this poem´s images vivid in your mind, yorgo, since your own use of language in your poetry and prose is exactly that.

Fred, that image of the silverware rattling on the dining room tables when a person kills themself at the moment of a torero´s demise gave me goosebumps! One could compose an entire poem around that image alone.
Loving ourselves is the key to avoiding making such a terrible decision as suicide, you are right. Many people believe that their own minds are dangerous places where intruders lurk, waiting to destroy them. With beliefs like these, well, you know the old chestnut about if there is a gun hanging above the fireplace in the first act, then it must go off in the third.

Magi, thank you so much for the very close and sympathetic reading of this poem, as you deliberately founder about in the darkness with its addressed protagonist. Really this comment shows what a marvelous reader you are, and I hope people look closely at what you have said about the boy and the dog.

Thank you, Rima, so much for stopping by and plunging into this poem.

The reference in the 'second person' as intruder is palpable in the opening line and that is how it is when one walks in the way of sudden and seemingly unexplainable loss. The poem is a dagger to the heart of anyone who has felt loss, and the association to images of darkness, abandonment, terror, fear, and perhaps above all, helplessness is unavoidable. The poem presents the barrier of hopelessness in an act so devastating that we can scarcely get our arms around it, much less our reasonable minds. Perhaps the most difficult of all is the disconnect between our love and our inability to stop the dissolution of that love: "who alive will save the boy?" The poem ends in a dark place, not as an apologetic for suffering, but as an emblem and marker for what has happened in the here and now. "Only this. Sleep," a hollow proposition for the survivors? Not when mapped up against sorrow..,perhaps more a delineation of comfort in the wake of such a tragedy. A brilliant, though deeply sad and penetrating poem.

Powerfully beautiful and intense, John. Creates all kinds of images while reading through this labyrinth of a poem but at the end, no lightness, just darkness.

This poem conveys are profound sense of loss. Not just the commonality of suffering and death that necessarily defines our lives but something more, something more seminal to the being of the intruder. Intrude, indeed. The helplessness, the inability to penetrate the foreboding fence and confront for himself what lies beyond is simply not possible.

Its as if a dog from hell had to signal the futility of his reaching out by devouring rotten flesh.

I don't know whether my view has validity and it doesn't matter, does it? The witness to the death of a best friend needs comforting that I hope your poem provides.

You, intruder,....John, this opening sent shivers to my spine. I have sat with all these same questions upon the death of a friend years ago. I blamed myself for not knowing, seeing, responding, and for not being there when he called. I could see through the "fence" but I could never get to his side of it.
The questions come and time passes. Your poem, like fitful sleep, offers some solace.

Beautiful imagery, brutal poem, sad loss. Sleep.

The poem resonated for me because I have a friend who is very suicidal now. Her desire to end it all comes and goes, and somehow we make it through to the other side of the tracks each time ... that place behind the fence, perhaps ... with me holding her hand, metaphorically, at least. And just two days ago, I was thinking - when she was at her worst - that it was my own selfishness in wanting her here - more than my compassion for her - that made me work so hard to convince her to stay. I confronted my own need - and found that this is the irony of such encounters - that the very people are most fragile are yet the ones who often hold the lamp for us in our darkness - and I guess, vice versa. I too have faced that vicious, unpredictable dog ... more than addiction, I think - he could even represent the nature of our existence.

I'm reminded by Frank Herbert's character Liet Kynes in Dune, who while alone and dying in the desert, watches the hawks above and says: Accident and error are the most persavive elements in the universe. Even the hawks appreciate this fact. (I'm paraphrasing by memory - forgive any errors which are mine.)

Anyway, thanks for the poem. It expresses the dark place and the shadow side that exists in parallel with the light.

Wow. The incident is terrible, but I must say that I'm in love with the poem, John. Call me a heartless aesthete. Here in this fenced-off yard, with pit bull and dirty child, you've given us an objective correlative for what it must feel like to face a friend's suicide. We feel the urge to help balanced against the fear of provoking a violent reaction, the uncertainty, the sense of separation, the alien, frightening and knife's-edge world of the suicidal mindset. As poetry this is just remarkable, and your friend has my condolences.

That is so sad. The hopelessness of addiction and probably an underlying mental disorder that made alcohol attractive often make suicide seem like the only escape. It's so sad for the survivors who must spend the rest of their lives riddled with guilt over whether they could have done something different to change the outcome of this. This poem is very powerful - as all of your work is.

Ed, you comment reminds me of the sign on the Mexican garden in the greatest literary masterpiece ever written about alcoholism, Malcolm Lowry´s UNDER THE VOLCANO: No se puede vivir sin amar.¨ One cannot live without love. It´s true, but the loved ones can´t do anything about a person who can´t find their way back to connecting with them, to finding themselves through loving again.

Thank you for your acute remark, my dear jennifer. It´s true, this poem has no hopeful or happy ending, but that´s because there isn´t any in this sort of dire situation. Things just are, and my friend just has to pick up the pieces of his memories that now have an ending point.

Umar, yes, your viewpoint has validity, because it is precisely hopelessness that´s evoked here, and incapability of changing an outcome.

John, the image of the ´barrier´was the first one I saw when I started writing this poem. Once an individual starts to isolate themselves from others in their determination to end their own suffering, no matter what the cost to their loved ones, it´s pretty hard to reach them. Thanks for this incisive comment from your own experience.

Thanks, Richard, for reading this piece.

A lot of fascinating ideas in your poetic comment, Stirling. We really learn to value our lives when we see the vulnerable ones who are having trouble ´staying afloat.´We treasure our sanity, our mental health. I like that Dune quote a lot.

James, we have to be ruthless with ourselves in order to write superlative poetry, fiction, theatre. We have to be unsentimental at at times appear to others as cruel and unfeeling. Later on they realize we were just authentically depicting a reality. I admire your ´heartless´stance because it is reaching for the truth.

Thank you very much, Jennifer, for your high praise as well as your perspective on the terrible behavioral loop of displacement which is the addiction/compulsion cycle.

There is such emotion mixed with passion and angst in this poem, John, about which you aptly and superbly describe the angst of a man gripped with crippling depression that has left no resolve.

How interesting that today I wrote on Brautigan, inspired by reading Colonel Possum's profile and I cannot find my copies of Brautigan.

I have heard of several in my town here who have met similar fates as you describe here.

John, your incredible poem is a Feature in Wednesday Writing Essentials.

This is heart breaking. A young man my son was friends with for years took his life on Christmas Day. It's unfathomable.

Awfully good
Terribly brilliant
Frightfully dark
Truly a nightmare
Woefully stark
There is no light there
But a satanic spark

John, as always, you are a world class writer.
These amazing comments reflect your inimitable talent.

I feel every word, phrase as real.
From my deepest thoughts: He is at rest now.
We, left on earth, hold all the sadness.
My condolences to all who knew this soul.

No one who reads this poem will ever forget it -
a profound use of your talent, John.

I am so sorry my friend. Your nobility shines through in the way you use your considerable talent at such a terrible time. If my little poem helped you, then we can speak of True Poetry

John - this descent into the wreckage of a life is so powerfully depicted here. I wonder if the intruder is in fact the friend who killed himself, and the child represents his lost spirit, living on the edge of danger with the lethal dog. He can see himself dancing that terrible jig, but is unable to come to terms with the danger, This beast could turn on the pale lad any time, rip out his throat, and so denial rules: he believes himself safe on this side of the fence, pretending to retain a control, even as he wonders if his soul is to be lost while recognizing that he can't save it Who alive here will save the boy?

A different look, perhaps off track, but nobody can deny the chill of fear and futility you've served us up here. My best wishes for your friends grief to be short and fully resolved.

John, I feel like I've watched a whole movie here, so intense is the visuality. And the willfully departed leave a kind of suction in their confusing wake -- which I feel here as a constant undertone.

Oh, John...you have opened up quite powerful images that will haunt my dreams, asleep and awake, for a long time to come... it hits too close to home... a brilliant, once beautiful girl who has been trying to self-destruct in one way or another since she was 12...she is now 49 and the last actual attemp was in November a year ago.
Your words bring raw emotions and deep buried thoughts to the surface and reminds me again of the helpless feeling when I think about this wasted life.
I am so sorry for your friend. The ones left behind are the ones to suffer the consequences of desperate acts.

Bravo! This piece is very touching and real... The metaphor of the child with the pit bull... which is exactly how those of us who have survived the love for an addict or alcoholic or destructive mentally ill person view our helplessness in their lives...

I am not sure whether to be angry or grateful for that fence...

I'll look forward to your future writings.

John, I am in awe of this piece. I can't seem to find the words to tell you how brilliant the imagery is, the streets, the scenes are virtually alive. I have seen those streets, those el stations, those manic, starving dogs. I think at some point we all know these images. Poignant and brilliant, I apologize for my ineffective words, I am at the moment quite speechless.

Bravo~

I have often read your comments on others' poetry, but this is my first introduction to one of your poems. I am overwhelmed and filled with admiration. Your personification of death imbues the reader with the sense of suicide's living force and draw; the overwhelming power that insidiousness of addiction can cause. I am sorry for your loss. When my son, Thomas, was a teenager, one of his friends (who was a real jokester and very popular) went home after school and loaded up his father's shot gun. No one could ever reconcile this boy's senseless death because he seemed so happy. Today, I am reminded of the poem Richard Corey by Edward Arlington Robinson. Your poem has penetrated deeply.

Where nobody whistles anymore….this rips my heart out.

Fantastic poem John. The clarity, depth and language skill is evident in your powerful emotive descriptions.
The tragic end and psychological turmoil ...heartfelt.
Best wishes.

The first stanza paints an eerie backdrop that heightens the sense of loneliness and desparation. The last line, 'When he urged you to visit him where nobody whistles anymore' was simply chilling. It makes me understand your friend had some idea of his friend's despondency and wanted to help.
The meataphor in the first line of the second stanza just makes the imagery more bleak and adds to a sense of hopelessness. 'Down twisted subway tracks through their silent abandoned stops.' Down, twisted and subway are all words of that below the surface and then to add the word abandoned speaks of even greater hopelessness. You continue this vein of imagery with the word ruined, then introduce the purple moths. Moths often portend death in literature. These moths 'flit wildly' which just adds to the feeling something is wrong. He doesn't show just heightens the ominous mood and then 'distant footfalls' reminds me of the foreboding in scenes of Sherlock Holmes novels or a Bela Legosi movie. Then, 'Screaming' and the terror comes to the front.
The filthy child to me is a depiction of the depravity your friend's friend has sunk into and the pit bull bull is the alcohol or that which causes such feelings of despondency and the 'rotten cellulose pulp' depicts the ravages within you friend's friend's mind, spirit and body. The next stanza is interesting because it hints at a previous awareness within the present context of events. Your friend has 'protective instincts', but in the next line we find more hopelessness in the 'forbidding barrier.' The next stanza is simply 'What if?', but in the last line and in the last word, we find it is all for naught and too late. A very sad poem.

ouch. very well done... but painful

I was going to go on and dialogue with the last group of commenters about this poem, in the hopes of saying a few more things, but then I realized I had very little else to say. I especially wanted to thank Tom Curl and William Dotani for offering detailed and complex readings of the symbolism in the poem, both fascinating alternative views. This poem is, as William pointed out, ¨a very sad poem,¨ and now I have just learned that a very dear friend, my Peruvian buddy Victor, who I saw in Los Angeles in November, is dying from a brain tumor that the doctors assured him back two months ago was shrinking to the point where they would surely operate. Now they are offering him tips on how to inject himself with morphine.....this is the end. I am so sad, so very sad, mainly because I lived through similiar circumstances and he will not. I just want to say to all those on suicide watch--no, grasp them by their shoulders and stare them in the eyes and if need be, kiss them on their eyes, their noses, their lips, then inside their ears like a lover, and kiss their fingertips that stroke the world from pillow at night to running water´s drip in the day: Live! Live, because this life is worth living, even when we feel drowned or burning up with self loathing , disappointment or failure! Live, because your feelings ARE NOT your reality, your pleasure is not your principle nor is it an end like a plan, there are so many moments that will follow this one, but bathe the child, feed the dog, tear down the fence and run down the road as far as you can go as fast as your legs will move! Live!

Yes John, Live!!!!!!!!!! We need to understand that moments are fleeting and as Emerson said, are unique and will never be exactly the same again. For us that live, the hardships, health problems and deaths of those we love is like a wound to our soul. I've lost a brother, my dad and two close friends. The pang of this loss simply hurts.
I found comfort in Emily Dickinson's poems because she seemed to have the resolve to stand up and face death without fear.
I am holistic and always hold out hope. I am wondering if your friend has tried Vitamin C intravenous therapy? I have heard there are some mushrooms extracts that help. I personally drink Aloe Vera juice daily to build my immune system up to fight off internal inflammation. I have heard from my holistic health provider that this juice fights cancer, but know of no case study to support her words. If your friend is having Chemo, and for pain, a small amount (no more than 1 ounce every 8 hours) of Essiac tea is helpful. There is always hope. I will pray for your friend. Miracles do happen.

Losing friends seems to be a terrible virus that has swept through our lives this year. Loving and losing those close to us is truely an experience we must endure, but the option of living without loving is not really an option.
I wish you peace.

I'm very sad for you on receiving the news about your friend Victor. It is always hard to lose a friend. Thinking of you and praying Victor's suffering is not drawn out.

John, your passionate comment equals your poem.
I am so glad you live and write.

wow, how intense... how sad... life is not always fair...
Blessings to all....

John -

I was told as a young man that the holidays were when most people took their own lives. I can remember not believing it. But of course, as we age we see the world through more realistic eyes laden with truth; I suppose. You have delievered to us such a devastating truth on the horror and angst that anyone who has lost a loved-one in this manner certainly feels and must face.

Your words cut through the flesh of denial like some surgical cleaver; abrupt, everlasting and without apology. You wrote this piece in a tone that seems to match (as nearly as possible) the shock of the reality of such an unthinkable loss and complete waste of a valued life.

I loved the way in which you tied the piece up, leaving us knowing what we would all know in a situation like this; that sleep would be our only answer. Perfect!

No one can accompany another's death walk when the only invitation is barred from
any soul contact within. The imagery of this poem is devastating in its finalization
of any attempt at meriting the voyeur reader's or friend's likelihood of transposing this fated demise into a pulsing breath.

I have walked along these rails many times and been present to be the cursed, the cursing, the hopeless and the hoping, the child and the childless and sometimes, miraculously, with a magic whisper or a candle that glowed into a shiver that felt the contrast and chose the heated light……each has indelibly bleak memories that this poem captures, written by a masterful poet and a friend who has also witnessed every aspect of this almost hallucinatory nightmare. When I "almost" died once in such a dark place, it was much as this, with demonic forces cajoling in the shadows, sculptures dancing with rats and spider webs entwined about a "child" who could only pretend to call for help when the end most certainly was final. Someone else made the call…….and as a final note…..it is always worth trying to re-edit the scripted final hour's demise with any prod available….the scars and burns are forever fare…..but such territory as this poem conjures, can be, but should only be travelled by those who know how to weave light through the most powerful shadowfare, without falling into its jowls of death grips. I cannot read this without deep tears and shudders. I have not been able to comment for what seems like forever since forst reading it…it is too close to home to even distance into poetry or mere artistic conjugations of emotions, images, and projected fates….....this is the chosen walk of great friends and many beautiful, talented people I have known intimately….it is the deepest sadness at their uneditable deaths after having been there, in the shadows, not knowing exactly the right words or the right embrace to bring them back from the throes of addictive seductions.

WOW! Sounds like a crazy dream!

Dear John,

I think this is a brilliant poem.
Your use of concrete imagery in this poem is exceptionally skillful.
Entities taken from life and used in the poem (train tracks for the'E' train - the feeling of darkened streets and vacant lots - Pitt bulls - etc - etc) I believe flood the reader's consciousness like a overflooding river of cultural Archetypes (sp?) - - I think this poem moves from a personal tragedy to obliquely act as a metaphor for the tragedy of the state of our Western society at present - - - Our society ( like the poor man whose death specifically motivated the creation of this poem) is on a crash course towards it's own cultural suicide.
ALSO (and I have to give this next idea some more thought - why I have this observation is still in the intuitive stages for me ) - somehow this poem makes me think of Jean Cocteau's film (sp?) 'Orphius and Euridicees' (SP ?????). That film is so much about love and loss and also Cocteau uses amazing images ot Orpheus communicating with Hell/Hades via the car radio as he works on his car And Cocteau has Orphius enter Hades by going through mirrors. - - - Anyway - your poem is BRILLIANT ( as the Brits like to say ) and I love it and I am just sharing these intuitive associations the poem gave me.
I feel priviledged to read your poetry John !

'Ta'

Madame

Powerful and raw, John. I, too, feel for your friend in his grief and confusion. Suicide, sadly, hurls its awful mantle of pain, anger and confusion, the jumble and tumble of unanswered questions on those who, shocked and grieving are left to crawl out from under this pall, a weight that clings and resists..

The end to pain can be seductive, but the end of the sufferer's pain , often brands that pain into the hearts and lives of those who are left helpless and hopeless for resolution. The survivors keep trying to search the abyss beyond the dangling question mark.

I have no words to share.... the pain is all too real!