EDDIE'S DEAD (THAT'S WHAT I SAID) - A Poem

EDDIES DEAD
THATS WHAT I SAID

Maybe it was a flashback
from his time in Korea
in the army
watching soldiers have sex in the open
against fences
with local girls

That caused him to think Love was dead
and made him kill himself

Or maybe he thought about his wife
dying when he was 28

Or the fact that his fiance quit him
at 52.

Maybe the stress of trying to comfort
families of the dead
Ate him up inside
Silently standing by in his clerical collar
awkward
as they came to claim body parts IDd from DNA
held inside the refrigerator trucks
humming 24/7
under the big blue tent
at Ground Zero

We had met the year before 9/11
I was the day bartender
Eddie would come in
and eat his lunch
at the bar.

We got to talking
2 ducks out of water.
Irish History
Episcopal churches
He knew my gospel choir

We’d talk for hours
After I had left my boyfriend
After his first fight with his fiance
Middle aged teenagers on the phone
He kinda liked me
I was like his sister, he said.


Eddie wasn’t very cute.
Hounddog eyes, George Washington lips
He kinda resembled Bob Hoskins
A young Alfred Hitchcock

Came to my church with me, once.
It was cool
I was proud of my buddy
in the seminary
Worked for a trade union
A people’s person
A tough Christian man.

Wierd, tho, I didnt want to call Eddie
after my brain surgery

I was afraid hed get too upset
He was a bull in a china shop
And my head felt like delicate porcelain
I had to knit alone

Eddie said he had been
shunned by the other seminarians
Because he majored in disaster counselling
Pharisees, we joked, looking for a nice
suburban parish with a cosy manse
But
EDDIES DEAD THATS WHAT I SAID
Dead from his own hand.
That’s the word from a mutual friend
I called the Brooklyn precinct
(They never got back to me)

His girlfriend broke off the engagement
Last time I saw him he was
drunk
Tipsy on his feet
How many Episcopalians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Two. One to screw in the lightbulb and one to mix the cocktails

My son and I held him up
We all had dinner together that night
He came out to visit us on Staten Island
He babbled on
Trying to figure out why his fiance had left him
Without a forwarding address
Just a goodbye email
the stress of unemployment
the stress of leaning on him
She ran out on him and the landlady
(I wondered briefly if he hadn’t done away with her, and his first wife too)
He was miserable
A bellowing bull
In mortal pain

He had comforted those families whose loved ones body parts were DNA’ed
ID’ed and claimed
down at Ground Zero
In the tent near the Pit

He stood by as they cried
Wearing his clerical collar
Silent
Awkward(He was new at that)
That’s why he was a pariah
Low man on the pastoral totem pole
According to him.
I didn’t want to see him when I took sick
He was a bull in a china shop
I was worried he would worry
Too loud..and my head hurt from surgery
Eddy knew all about history
and buildings
Pointed out the place where my great grandfather worked before the Civil War
strolling one evening in Soho
Eddie went to Harvard, even
but didn’t wear it on his sleeve
He told me a few years after we met
Me the bohemian, It was fun to have a friend who wore a suit and tie
And fit into society so well
But EDDIE’S DEAD, THAT’S WHAT I SAID

I called his job, no good
they said he passed away from bronchitis
Bronchitis?
I called the local precinct in Brooklyn
they didn’t call me back
I called the seminary
Mary worked in the office.
She gave me the lowdown.
The family wanted to keep it quiet.
She called him the last
casualty of 9/11.