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In sickness and in health
Dad had cancer, terminal;
3 years,
36 months,
1095 days.
He'd call into the baby monitor,
When he had to go to the bathroom.
He couldn't walk on his own anymore.
Once in a while when
She wasn't lost in the bottle, she
Would take him but that didn't happen often
(After all alcoholism is a disease).
When he was eleven he got diabetes
The brittle kind.
His doctors told him he'd
Die before he was forty.
Friday morning drunk
She yelled at him,
"Why don't you just die!"
He was too weak to roll over and
Escape her hateful stare,
He was too weak to cry.
That night he unplugged
His life support.
2 days
48 hours
28,800 minutes
For that I blame her and
I thank her.
A Few Minutes in Hell
The girl, age thirteen, sits
Across the table
From her mother
She's counted six so far.
But asks "how many?"
Two her mother replies, getting up and
Staggering into the kitchen.
The girl watches her pour another
Seven.
"This makes three," her mother says
Toasting to her invisible drinking partner.
Grinning she sits back down at the
Table and passes out in her plate
Of stuffed peppers
The girl cleans up the dishes,
All but the glass of scotch.
She knows better than to do that.
Another Empty Bottle
They lined the back
Hallway. Every week it
Was decided which would go
Out next, there couldn't be
Too many, the garbage men might
Suspect something.
Three was the unspoken number.
No more than
Three
Pine trees lined the driveway.
My parents planted them for my
Two sisters and I, they called
Them the sister trees.
For a while, we were three, inseparable.
When they left they didn't come back.
Then I was the only
One
Week before Thanksgiving Mom sold
The house. She told me to move
My own stuff or it would be left
Behind. I moved theirs too.
In the attic behind a box of history
Books I found four garbage
Bags full of empty bottles.
Finally I understood why we got a
Christmas card each year from the
Liquor store on the corner.
The trees are gone now, so
Are the bottles and the store.
Still, nothing has changed. |
Autumn Day
Trees gently drop their leaves
Which lightly rustle as we walk
I wonder if you're the one,
On a ground mostly brown now
With all the answers?
Crunching under your black work boots.
We try to avoid current events
Isn't the sky lovely today?
But they keep forcing themselves in.
War or no war, right or wrong
Kind of warm for October, don't you think?
We can't agree
Sunlight streams through naked branches
Forming patches of gold on the path and
Shadows that hide roots waiting to trip us up.
I hold your hand tightly and ask
Should we turn back now?
No, you say,
The day is too nice, let's keep going.
Red
I had someone else's
Dream last night.
Everything was red that's
How I knew
It wasn't mine. I dream
In black and white
Never color
The sky was like lava,
Moving ever so slowly
Towards the ground.
As it got closer, the grass under
My feet began to burn
I had no shoes
I ran as fast as I could
Trying to
Escape the lava sky.
It kept up, never gaining,
But never ceasing from
Being always over
My left shoulder, threatening to
Swallow me like it was the trees and rocks
Behind me.
My feet burned, soon
There was no skin, but I kept running,
Through the pain, through the fear,
Running where the sky wasn't.
Running forever with
Skinless feet on burning grass. |
