In Memoriam
It’s good to remember, even if difficult. I think of these two boys often, especially now, 20 years after their tragic passing. I especially think of their mothers and families, and wonder what they feel. Loss comes to us all, and to some, seemingly more cruel. What else do we have but to speak the questions out loud, or put ourselves in place of another?
ECCE HOMO
for Stephen Tsiorvas and Wade King, d. June 11, 1999, aged 10
Let's go hug them,
let's hold them close
before their crisp bodies
crumble
like old char
so light
and delicate like
a limp
boy.
Remember how just before the explosion
they were playing by the river--
half gasoline
half laughter
how happy they were!
And after, when
they ran up the hill, home,
their clothes fell away
in glittering flakes
across the green grass
and into the billowing sky?
Brother Andrew was afraid
to let them see each other.
He separated them
put Stephen in one room,
Wade in the other;
isolation was for naught.
They were black and red
except for the soles of their feet
and gummy eyes.
Their skin was so hot they
flapped and hopped like
flightless geese:
one foot
the next
arms pulling for eden on fire.
In every church now
throw out the crucifix.
Hang in its place a dead child
hang him over the mantle in your living room
around your slender neck
above your sleeping angel's bed
hold tight while you can
Worship there
there but for the grace of nothing
it could be you:
misdirected currents
your lighter sparking, or not
It was an accident.
The boys got caught
on the wrong hillside sloping
a homeless wind
a furnace with no doors
or it could be any of us
standing in the yard right now
in the street
running towards
you
with our bodies burned off
I wrote this the week of the tragedy, sourced from newspaper articles in the Seattle Times and Bellingham Herald. I shared it once in public, at a poetry slam at Bumbershoot, where the festival crowd gave a tepid response. I think that was the last competitive slam event I did. I always wonder, at events like that, if the artistic strategy of trying to reach deeply even a few people, at the expense of befuddling or missing the rest, works. Even — or especially — in the dense thrall of a goodtime weekend throng, there must be someone or two who are hurting or questioning, I figure. Those are the people I want to connect with. Must be the Catholic in me.
On that subject: “Ecce homo” — “Behold the man” — were the words (so saith the Gospel of John) that Pontius Pilate said while presenting Jesus Christ, having been whipped and crowned derisively with thorns, to the crowd that demanded he be crucified.
The boys would be 30 years old today, had they lived.
Image above via Adobe stock photos.