Comeuppance

For Michael, fallen through a sky-light

Your enemies call it comeuppance

and relish the details

of a drug too fine, how long

you must have dangled there beside yourself.

In the middle distance of your

twenty-ninth year, night split open

like a fighter's bruised palm,

a purple ripeness.

They say there weren't arms enough to hold you

back from the starry gone.

Friends just shook their heads.

With you it was always

the next attractive trouble

as if an arranged marriage had been made

in a country of wing walkers, lion tamers,

choirboys leaping from bellpulls

into the high numb glitter, and you,

born with the breath of wild on your tongue,

brash as gin.

True, it was charming for awhile.

Your devil's balance, your debts.

Then no one was laughing.

Hypodermic needles and cash registers

emptied themselves in your presence.

Cars went head-on.

Sympathy, old motor, ran out

or we grew old, our tongues

wearing little grooves in our mouths

clucking disappointment.

Michael, whatever pulled you up

by upstart roots

and set you packing

left the rest of us here, body-heavy

on the edge of our pews.

Over the reverend's lament

we could almost hear laughter, your moustache

still the angled black wings

of a perfect crow. Later

we taught ourselves the proper method for mourning

haphazard life: salt, tequila, lemon.

Drinking and drifting,

in your honor we barely felt a thing.