Poem of the Week: “Joey” by Neil Hilborn

To watch Neil Hilborn perform this poem, click the image.

 

Joey

 

Joey always told me, laughing, as though it were actually a joke

That he wanted to kill himself but it was never the right time,

There were always groceries to be bought

And little brothers to be tucked in at night.

Don’t worry, Joey isn’t gonna kill himself 20 more seconds into this poem,

It’s not that kind of story I’m telling here.

 

Joey got a promotion and now he can afford anti-depressants.

Joey is Joe now.

Joe is a cold engine in which none of the parts complain

Joe is a brick someone made out of fossils

If you removed money from the equation,

Joey would have been painting elk on cave walls

People would have fed him and kept him away from high places

Because goddamn look at those elk.

I think the genes for being an artist and mentally ill aren’t just related,

They’re the same gene

But try telling that to a bill-collector

.

We were seventeen

And I drove us all to punk shows in a station wagon that was older than any of us,

We were seventeen

And I bought lunch for Joey more often than I didn’t,

We were seventeen

And the one time Joey tried to talk to me about being depressed when someone else was around

I told him to shut the hell up and asked if he needed to change his tampon

You know that moment when the cartoon realizes he’s taken three steps off the cliff

And he takes a long look at the audience

Like we’re holding the last moving box in a half empty house?

Joey looked like that without the puff of smoke.

He just played video games for a half hour and then went home

 

I once caught Joey in my dad’s office,

Staring at the safe where he knew we kept the guns

Once Joey molded his car into the shape of a tree trunk and refused to give a reason why

I once caught Joey in biology class

Staring at a scalpel like he wanted to be the frog

Splayed out, wide open

So honest

 

There is one difference between me and Joey:

When we got arrested, bail money was waiting for me at the station

When I was hungry, I ate

When I wanted to open myself up and see if there really were bees rattling around in there,

My parents got me a therapist.

I can pinpoint the session that brought me back to the world,

That session cost seventy-five dollars.

Seventy-five dollars is two weeks of groceries

It’s a month of bus fare

It’s not even a school-year’s worth of new shoes,

It took weeks of seventy-five dollars to get to the one that saved my life.

We both had parents that believed us when we said that we weren’t okay

But mine could afford to do something about it

 

I wonder how many kids like Joey wanted to die,

And were unlucky enough to actually pull it off,

How many kids had people who cared about them but also had to pay rent?

I’m so lucky that right now I’m not describing Joey’s funeral

I’m so lucky we all lived through who we were

To become who we are

I’m so lucky-

I’m so

Lucky