Brother Lost Soul

There were oaks and elms, apple and pear trees lining the great grassy expanse, and on one side of the entrance to the thicket grew an abundance of holly. I hid my head with my arms against the oak tree and counted to one hundred. In early springtime, the air was still redolent with smoke from many chimneys. We knew where to find berries growing wild. Lofting in straight green lines were shoots of wild onion on the forest's floor. Throughout the thicket I looked: around hedges, into the greenhouse overgrown with weeds, over by the tulip beds, near where we found a robin's nest with light blue eggs, over beyond the ditches where a porcupine was spotted.

Where did you go? Where did you hide?

You ate all the oranges, peels and all. We heard you screaming, crying from the backyard where you had fallen asleep on an ant pile. It was your idea for us to pretend to be the Three Little Pigs, and for daddy to play the Big Bad Wolf. From then on, that's what we called him. Wolf. He sometimes called you Kal Bee, with an unmistakeable tone of affection. Keller Baby. We furtively made fun of Wolf's cursing and fussing in the mornings. We watched Lost In Space on BBC2 at the hotel near the Marble Arch, where Mama Cass later "choked to death on a ham sandwich." We wandered through woods and playgrounds, found a dead pigeon in El Paso, discovered a dead hedge-hog in Beaconsfield, climbed all around a downed helicopter in Russelsheim, then you climbed through the jungle bracken of Jacksonville.

Where did you go? Where did you hide?

"I bead! I feast," we'd constantly utter on the autobahn, conducting an imaginary auction, bidding on Porsches & Mercedes, speeding past us in the fast lane, feasting our eyes on the occasional Lamborghini, taut leather racing gloves gripping the wheel. From the El Paso desert, to wet sylvan meadows in England then Germany, to Florida's gator-infest bayous, and finally to the suburban wastelands of the Metroplex, you were my shadow.

Concrete, cookie-cutter homes, water towers, the mall. There was nothing to do in Richardson. Even the public library was closed on Sundays. Once Richardson's "charms" quickly evaporated, I devoured books, discovered music and ran my own small businesses. Looking back, I have no idea what you did with your time, how did you deal with your boredom?

Where did you go? Where did you hide?

You adopted
Wolf's stare, starless blank Da'ath
I seen 'em both
Not so many photos of yours
Your empath's cloak
Distracted from your selfishness
Were you holding?
Didn't mean to bring your buzz down
Gritting blue vein
Angrily declining treatment
Hunger disease
Taaka, Jager, Bud Light, Jim Beam
There's not enough
In the world to quench that thirst
Your friend told me:
You fell, face bones broke on pavement
Lit cigarette
Torched the vodka-ridden carpet
Drank eight quick shots
Pissed yourself, stank to high heaven
Brother Lost Soul
Where did you go? Where did you hide?

 Keller on the far left, holding his teddy bear.

That's Keller on the right.