Fast Day 174 September 29 2010 {On MY Brother's Suicide}

On My Brother's Suicide

Autumn approaches like a maddened hag,
shaking her bony branches like a sing-song curse
against the sky, against the faithless fallen leaves.
She comes loud and keening,
a banshee with a necklace of curcurbits,
dressed in widow's weeds for the mourning of the trees
and the eve of all hallows and the dia de los muertos.
She bids me return north
to the lake to visit the memory of family beasts
and pray at the tolling of loose screen doors that
fan remains of the gunpowder residue dawn,
...and my brother's life.
His vertebrae are asbestos covered bones,
his hepatitis blood laced with PBB,
he offers brandy, cigarettes, beer:
kongo for a tongue-less god.
Quicklike, my brother's life that could-have-been sits,
drinking a bottle filled with smoking herbs - he smiles,
at me with misty legba that has more life than life!
seeking the heroin of Ezili,
and the love that fights for life until the death.

notes:
This promises to be a powerful autumn, and the season itself impels me to speak of it. I saw something odd on September 23... at the river... and we'll see what comes of it. My brother is not well and does nothing but drink now. I saw his life as it could have been, and it had more warm aura than most people... it was more real than being with people one cares little about. He/It was sitting in the chair by me, about 4 feet away.
Ezili has been mentioned, Ezili Danto - the mother who fights for us.
Legba is a metaphor for male beings.

gun-powder residue dawn - left-overs from suicide (sorry - a heavy downer)
kongo - a kongo packet, or paket kongo.

La vieille porte automne qui nous dirige a la maison de Baron Samedi.