Remembering Jimmy Marvin

“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”  — William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”

Jimmy Marvin died
on a railroad track
where he’d passed out
after one last night
of fighting and drinking,
drugging and pissing
people off. 

No one would let him
crash at their house that night,
since he’d broken so much furniture
and burned down every bridge,
so he slept where he fell,
and the train cut him in half.

Once his fire
had been smothered
and all that was left
was the charred surfaces
he’d roared over
in his race to burn,
it was easy to forget
that there had been light
around him, too,
in the times I saw Jimmy
share his smokes or beer with us
in the moments before he became
his normal night time raging self,
swinging wildly
on friend or stranger alike
at imagined slights, pushing himself
on girls he’d just met,
and all his blind inattention
to the rules of keeping safe
and sane.   

Whenever
his name is mentioned,
his friends point
only at what was destroyed
and shake their heads.
It will likely stay that way
for as long as he’s remembered.

There’s something to be said for that, say
all the immoral immortals;
better to burn out than it is to rust,
burn the candle at both ends, etc.,
and don’t take much care as to who
loses skin in the process,
as long as it’s not you.

Do unto others,
then split; when in doubt,
freak out — things
Jimmy always said
before he turned up dead,
and I can remember those lines
better than I can
his jokes.  Nonetheless,
eventually we just let him die out there
on the tracks,
but we have not forgotten him,

no matter how hard we’ve tried.