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    • Home
    • Writer
      • Nonfiction 1A
      • Nonfiction 1B
      • Nonfiction 2
      • Sample poem 1
      • Sample poem 2
      • Academic Sample 1
      • Academic Sample 2
    • EDUCATOR
      • Teaching Philosophy
      • Methodologies
      • Words of Rader
      • Rader Resume
    • Leprechaun
      • Who Is Patrick Rader?
      • Skip the Pills &Talk Loud
      • From Trauma to Triumph
    • Contact
  • Home
  • Writer
    • Nonfiction 1A
    • Nonfiction 1B
    • Nonfiction 2
    • Sample poem 1
    • Sample poem 2
    • Academic Sample 1
    • Academic Sample 2
  • EDUCATOR
    • Teaching Philosophy
    • Methodologies
    • Words of Rader
    • Rader Resume
  • Leprechaun
    • Who Is Patrick Rader?
    • Skip the Pills &Talk Loud
    • From Trauma to Triumph
  • Contact

Cities of Death and Memory

Comparing My Death to Those of Justice and Vallejo

 He died in Miami. Él otro en Paris.

Ordinary Days and Unexpected Ends

I died in Denver just as impending rain became realized.
In retrospect, it's a surprise the Cubs and Rockies weren't delayed
and no surprise Sammy Sosa hit two homeruns.
I died on my way home from a matinee
like Vallejo, on a Thursday.

Life in Motion, Friends in Stillness

Dressed like my friends, who were drinking on the patio
of the Falling Rock just blocks away from Coors Field,
fetal raindrops hit my exposed skin like glass needles as I
motorcycled away from beer-fueled debates on the day's baseball.
I lived twenty-nine with no intent to see past thirty.

Death in Real Time

I was dead. Blood, red as the STOP sign I had run,
sponged into the black macadam of Mariposa Street.
Wailing emergency vehicles mourned my passing
convincing aquamarine strangers to halt my dying.
I died on a Thursday—not as valorous as Vallejo.
I died in the rain—not as judiciously as Justice.

Turning Death into Verse

Like the Colorado Rockies,
my next baseball game was not in Denver.
And, unlike their poetic corpses,
I have turned my death into verses.

PRORADER

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