Will Rubin

Poem essay

E block

Jesse James Days

Growing up, I have always had an obsession for the past. It's the peculiar moments I can

still recall. The events that can only occur once. Such as the time I watched Caroline and Rosie

lie drunken and stupid in the middle of the road. It was midnight when I watched them lounging

at the main intersection, while wondering from where they got such confidence. Or the tear that I

never thought I would see leave my brother’s eyes before I boarded a plane home. It may be

impossible to explain this desire in conversation, and yet lyrically it holds truth. It's quite a

mystery, the literary world. There has to be something more to it. Perhaps there's a silent

soundtrack within a story. Perhaps the shivers granted are merely the readjusting of a soul in its

limited body.

The uncovered purpose of an artist is to help promote the flow of communication. If

youth and rebellion could talk, then maybe they would speak through John Lennon and The

Beatles. If the sorrow of Jesus's apostles could cry, then maybe it would do so in the form of

The Last Supper. If grief and sympathy could be taught, then maybe they would be exposed

through ancient roman theatrical plays. If confusion and understanding could bisect, then maybe

it would appear in the form of a poem. As the poet may thrive from his creative recognitions, it is

the random connections that make it beautiful. It is the ability of the artist to encapsulate

something others have suffered trying to do.

For the longest time, my childhood remained disassembled and passionate in my

memory. I had never known how too express it. I was never told how to create it, so others

would care. I thought I was the only one with this need to share. I was blatantly wrong.

Kai Carlson-Wee's, Jesse James Days poem made sense. It brought me back to the valuable

unimportant details. For instance, the eczema that crawled into my best friend’s eyes while we

continued our explorations into the woods. The pyromaniac spark that then replaced his rash

when we dipped our fingers in melting wax, at the bottom of candle jars. The night we skated in

Hillman's backyard, until the following morning. The scraped knees, poison ivy, smell of magic

cards and biscuits, Calvin and Hobbes comic books, monopoly games, the rigid introduction to

both profanity and women.

Jesse James Days is a collection of events worth remembering. It's the combinatory

climax of Kai's childhood with his brother. Though ultimately it hinders the emotions linked with

separation. I could feel the poet’s loneliness. His ability to capture the big picture by combining

the smaller images like a puzzle. And now every time I walk up that old giving hill, the one that

covered us both in its daunting shadow, burned our thighs, and encouraged us to fly down its

gradient in our man made derby car. I remember the events not in a timeline, but rather as an

era of opportunism and curiosity.

They replaced our initials in the sidewalk pavement, disregarding our belief that they

would be there for eternity. Roxy's dog leash is still attached to the same tree though it seems

shorter than before. I still flinch when I make the turn, waiting for her to show those small tainted

teeth leaking drool. The nostalgic part of my brain can still smell one of Blake's bonfires. His

weird friends and their obsession with attaching pins to their backpacks. One boy would stab a

hot dog with the kindling wood and rest it over the flames until a meaty ballpark smell

overpowered the s'mores and scent of dulcet teenage girl perfume. Our faces glared yellow, red,

and shades of orange. We, the audience, studied your brother's every move. In the tree that

captured our basketball in its selfish branches and fall leaves, a bird’s nest unaware of its own

home’s origin. After Blake's secretive disappearance to "The Family School" and my departure

to the Adirondacks, things began to fade. Your curiosity fled to marijuana and thrift shop clothes.

Mine grew, died, and rested inside my stomach. I became sick with seizures while you remained

content in this new world. I was the only one that cared. Blake never really came home for

longer than a day, and you became lost in your fictional books and scrawny condescending

hippie friends.

After connecting to this poem by Kai Carlson-Wee, it became apparent of what I could

do. I was taught how I can make my memory matter, and to some day hopefully touch another

soul. Reach another mind and relate to the past of a complete stranger.

This is Squandered Youth:

We hide, camouflaged and exuberant

Keeping our breathe around footsteps crunching

And whispers along the ride away path

Remnants of pink bubble gum exploded below our noses, wrappers crumpled

Scratching the soles of four dirt stained bare feet

Communicating in cracked sign language and universal expression

Beneath divided

And auburn rustic tracks running across the ditch

Squatting above these smoked cigarettes, broken glass, and treasures

Flinching at garden snakes on their carnivorous forages for food

And scurrying Norway rats feasting carrion at nighttime

While the lone doe pauses it's lengthy stride to ponder

To recuperate and question whom is actually lost

At our shrills and giggles it vanishes

Now it's our own blood shedding from prickly vines and wooden splinters

Molting like the red robins, ripening the color of the rail

Hands once clasp then forever release through street intersections

Venturing above, planes rip through the clouds

without causing damage or reshaping their figure

Seams of sunlight rush through holes in the thicket

The eyes on the back of our head melt and clog

No longer allowing us to know our history

In which has blended into geometric shapes and figures

In the pathway neon vested men slash and kill the green

At an abundance much greater than our bamboo sticks could achieve

Our dark in-eclectic brains grant color to these immortal days

Nights which strung to the morning in a forever winding maze

For the existed familiarity of each other's tendency's

Unknowingly we share loyal friendship breeding companionate love and trust

For the beauty of a young woman that love is platonic

Blonde hair dragged through the wind pushing at her back to proceed forward

To maintain a sudden rhythm speeding the natural pacemaker in our hearts

Bottling these moments and tossing these notes out too sea

Only to gaze at how far we have drifted from our past

Forgetting how to recover this lost debris

That bob over uncharted life

Spotter by the lazy vision of a midwater trawler

Drunken and expired

A heart once filled with liquid gold

His memory on the brink of forgetfulness

Once encaged in the skull of a boy

Under the railroad tracks

Waiting