Eulogy For The Wrong Guy

he was
the wrong guy 

for damn near every job —
modest brain and small brawn
built for clumsy
not for comfort
or smart 
or speed —

had one decent trait —
a modicum of skill
at stitching memory
to current events, then
making a song of sorts
from them — when
the memory started to go,
that went with it — it wasn’t 
much of a thing in the first place
so — 

he was
not pretty at all

in his own eyes — acted
like he was because 
someone told him that’s how
you get over but mostly

he was 
ridiculous

rankly bad at times
when it suited his cowardice
to be so but mostly just 
criminally lazy when it came to
right action —

his heart admittedly was
mostly in the right place
even if it was small and
moved around too much to ever
be a great anchorage —

he was
unreliable as narrator
and as man —

still he was

somehow loved by more than a few

which (he alone
knowing himself in full)
puzzled him enough that
he did not trust such love
to last and so

he was alone when he passed — 

it would be romantic to describe him as 
tortured but 

his struggle never
rose far enough into epic territory
and never led
to epic enough art

for the description to be apt —
the wrong guy really
for that — 

we say instead
he was throughout
a self-inflicted wound — 

now that at last
he’s not

we wish him peace and healing
wipe a scant tear away —

then
the forms having been observed

turn back to
whatever we were doing
before we found out

how dead he finally was