Naked, Face Down (Heath Andrew Ledger April 4^th,1979-January 22^nd, 2008)

You were found naked and dead.
The nightly news led
with DRUGS!
the way it always does,
and the infotainment channel, worse:
you “had an addiction
to dark roles,” they said—
straight-faced.

I saw the phrase so many times,
I did what any fan might do,
I googled the words I guess
will be forever linked with you—
        naked, face down—
and found a thousand and two
entries for you:

        hunky heart-throb
        found naked face down
        dated so on and so on
        found naked face down
        father of, ex-partner of
        was naked face down
        golf-dates with Nicholson
        then naked face down
        party boy, drug-addict
        and naked face down
        wallflower, loner
        still naked face down
        Oscar nominee
        naked face down
        played a gay cowboy

One supposes lots of souls
die naked: taxi-drivers, CEOs,
our mothers, perhaps.
What percentage face up or face down
never bedeviled
the most ingrained statistician
till dying ass-up meant something specific.

As for you—
poor boy, you’re through—
and I who extol you,
use you too.

On Our Old Disagreement Regarding
the Relative Worth of Sinead O’Connor

That girl is nothing but a haircut,
you said. This from someone

who permanently tarnished the porcelain
of our sink with hair-dye—purple, green

orange, red—all to provoke the tut-tut
of tongues in our stifling neighborhood.

I loved her, and said so, and continued to, even
with all those things she said, even after she tore

up the Pope on T.V. (After that, maybe more).
Which, given your ambivalent view

of the Church, must surely have struck
something in you. I’d never know—

by then we’d worn through our luckless bond.
Now, I’m not surprised you didn’t see

how like her you were. So many of us
when young sense a kindred spirit and

take off at full run in the other direction—
afraid to meet ourselves before we’re ready.