james dean and me

(the assignment was to write a poem about a personal experience with a historical figure.)

I was mopping up

one day after we'd kicked out

all the raging alcoholics with their heads

on the bar;

and then I heard someone,

some young guy, solitary, making speeches

to an empty room,

his face twisted up in circles,

his voice attacking his mouth like a mad dog —

"You're tearing me apart!"

I felt obligated to apologize.

I said hey, why don't you let me pour you a gin and tonic,

and I said hey, what's your name

and he said, "Call me Jim,"

and I asked him, hey, are you okay?

We went up to the roof and looked at the sky for a while,

and no planetarium could ever

look like that, not all raw and proud like the night sky —

and I think I fell asleep,

because when I woke up he was telling me that

the universe had ended

and I sat bolt upright,

nearly knocking over his

(newly refilled)

gin and tonic.

He said "Watch yourself," and grinned;

"The life you save might be mine!"

His words dissolved together like watercolors.

I could smell the alcohol that had dripped onto his red jacket,

like a poppy field (or an oil spill);

I asked him if maybe

he'd had a bit too much to drink

and he told me:

"We alcoholics

are the last true hopeless romantics."

I could see the shape of his ribcage beneath his sliced-up shirt.

His breathing was a slow, tormented

rise and fall.

Then he looked down and smiled and said,

"I need the gin because sometimes I don't know

what I'm doing here but when I have a glass in my hand,

I stop caring about that."

The look he gave me made me think that

if I'd touched him he would have

cracked apart right there on the roof.

We went back downstairs,

threw snowballs at passing cars,

spray-painted the side of the bar with sappy slogans

(he told me "one day these will all come true, I know it")

and we laughed for years and years

until he said he had to go

I asked him, let me read for Mr. Mineo,
and I'll be your Plato if you'll be my Jim,
and half the things I want to say
won't be in the script,

and he said,
"I've run out of time. I'm too little and it's too late."

I will tell you that when he got into his car to drive away

I had a bad feeling.