Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

Last winter, a cousin of mine passed away. Mark was born two weeks prior to me. Our mothers raised us as if we were brothers; we often wore matching holiday outfits and we played the same sports. We grew apart in our teenage years. He made different choices that led to a cycle of crimes, rehab facilities, and stints in jail. As did many of our friends we grew up with in North Philadelphia.

He was a great storyteller. Some of what he relayed about his brushes with violence selling street drugs could make for its own very compelling podcast. I was there for some of it, like the time, aunts and uncles secretly ferried him to me, after some friends? associates? put out a hit on his life. I drove him out of town to a bus station and purchased a ticket to Nashville, where he resided for a decade. None of us believed he would live as long as he did.

Because of my family’s addiction issues, I spoke out of fear to my children, and often rather harshly. I worried particularly that they would fall prey to the opioid epidemic that hit the state of Vermont, a fentanyl crisis as severe as the rest of the country. Several friends grieved the loss of children to overdose. I wish I had told my children of my casual experiment with drugs, moments that scared me so much I knew if I went further I would not survive.

But it turns out I did not need to reference my journey. The music they listened to, and the rappers they admired spoke about a life they could only picture in their heads, which was ironic and a blessing. The music did not merely glorify drugs but mourned the demise of artists, storytellers, friends, and collaborators.

Today’s lyric poem points to the fallout wrought by drugs by making its subject a fine rapper my children once introduced me to.

For Mac Miller and 2009
by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Imagine, you’re on a bicycle and the wind 
is behind you, and you’re pedaling fast

on bald tires through an imagined blue world.
Between the stratus clouds there is no such thing

as fentanyl—no light dusting in your coke,
or in the next cloud on your left, which may, 

one day, become a Pittsburgh snowstorm.
Humans have created all types

of afterlives, and this bike ride on a bed 
of clouds is what I imagine for all my dead. 

I often wish I had met my partner even
sooner; I wish I could go back and find 

my way into one of their late-night drives, 
swimming around the New Jersey suburbs—

find my way into the backseat, listen
to “Senior Skip Day,” and admire the pattern

of each fingerprint. We all want to cheat
something, and I’d cheat time for just

a single extra moment, to feel the bends
of one extra backroad together. I wish

I could have met all my partner’s friends 
before they died. We are too young

to know so much about life without
our friends. We look to the stratus

clouds and every day 
we learn more.

“For Mac Miller and 2009” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli from WINTER OF WORSHIP © 2025 Kayleb Rae Candrilli. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.