POETRY MAN
Brother Tom got into poetry a few years after our mom passed
away. He called me up.
“Laurie--“ He called me by a name I’ve not used since the
age of 12, around the time Tom cracked up. I told everyone to call me Lauren then. “--Laurie, I’ve got
some poetry and I want you to look at it.”
It was flattering for him to call and ask me because I was
in a graduate school program in Connecticut to be an English teacher. He probably thought I knew a little
about poetry, and I do. Not a lot,
but just enough to 1. know what I like, 2. to enable me to rattle off some
names of poets and kinds of
poetry, and 3. to get in trouble.
“Uh, Tom, sure.
I’d love to read some of your poetry.”
“I’d like to read to you. This one’s called--“ Omigod, was
he going to read aloud over the phone?
There’s no way that would work well -- with me, poetry needs to be seen
as well as heard because I’m a visual learner, first. That much I took away from my studies for my Education
degree, the multiple intelligences theory of learning.
I cut him off. “Tommy? Uh, Tom? Please, I am better with poems and reading if I can see the
words --“
“What, Laurie?
You don’t want to hear my poems.
You don’t think they’re good enough.”
“Tom, what do I know?
And how would I think they’re not good enough if I haven’t seen or heard
them yet?”
“You just aren’t interested.”
“No, you’re jumping to conclusions. Give me a chance. All I’m saying is I won’t get as much
out of them if you read them aloud and I can’t see them.”
“Oh. . .” He
takes a half minute to stop and think.
I continue. “So, do you have my address? Can you mail some to me?” This was around Y2K -- the year 2000 --
and he didn’t have email. I didn’t
even know if he had a computer.
Everything about Tom was shrouded in mystery, partly because I was
saddened to hear about his circumstances and didn’t want to know.
I remember visiting him one time in Woodhaven, Queens, at
his apartment around the time he’d been placed there. A program for mentally ill adults, Phoenix House, helped him
to move out of a group home and into a place of his own for the very first
time, at age forty something. Good
for him! But, when I was actually
at the place, my heart broke: the one-bedroom apartment in a rundown 1920’s
tenement on a tiny side street in semi-urban Queens, was tired out, ugly,
small. There was nothing “nice” about
the place or its contents. The
used furniture was cheap and drab and uncomfortable. Clutter was strewn everywhere, magazines, books, papers,
CDs, tapes. Tom asked if he could
play guitar and sing a song for me.
He’d been playing blues guitar -- mostly electric -- most of his life,
always bragging that he was really good.
Sure, I said, play something. He played a slow song, something with a
nice lick, and he played well. Tom
sang along, too: not a pretty sound, but he was sincere and on key. His tone was unpleasant, but the pitch
was all right. He sang a song by
his idol, Eric Clapton. I couldn’t
tell what it was, though, because I don’t listen much to Clapton. Tom looked disappointed that I didn’t
know the song -- which was due to the combination of his not singing well and
the song being one I only heard on the radio occasionally.
It was “You Look Wonderful Tonight.” I can’t hear the song nowadays without
choking up.
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