First he was my teacher, then my friend. The poet, Dean Young, passed away Tuesday at 67 from Covid. As a recipient of a heart transplant a few years ago, he was always at high risk for all kinds of conditions.
You can find some of his work here that he let me publish through my small press:
Beloved Infidel — https://t.co/lfpDIjtbCA
The Foggist — https://t.co/ZsjCUgEfqF
Elegy for the Last Male Northern White Rhino — https://t.co/61Ewnbyu23
I also write this in his memory:
Elegy
--For Dean Young, 1955-2022
He wrote that it was necessary to "live to love"
but I wanted him to love to live
with his loaner heart
borrowed from a motorcycle rider who crashed,
wanted him to ignore the annoying crinkle
caused by all of us who loved him
stepping on the cat toys he left lying around.
I know now we disturbed his wa
demanding the little bit of air
he was trying to hold onto for himself.
Success is always measured
in the bits of pottery clay
you manage to clean up every afternoon,
but the last time I talked to him
I had the sense he was breaking
more pots than he was making,
floor strewn with shards and fragments
of all the grand vessels he imagined
that never cohered.
All the years of trying
to get across the finish line.
He has gone into the burning building.
He isn't coming out
for the spirits of the dead
have finally had their way.
Oh great sunflower of the afterlife,
watch over him, please.
Grant him the typewriter
with the broken o
so that when the messages
arrive from the underworlds
we'll know it's him sending them
and we will be glad.
