--DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS NOW?

...This is yesterday's output (a pretty good day, writing wise):

Frayed and Worn

But here we are

Ten breaths older

Bloated moon in the window

Sky black as onyx

Stars too shy to stare

As we raid the inventories

Of all our old wounds

And you sort through the album

Saying this one

This is the one that did it

Holding up a picture of two

Twenty-four year olds

The frayed and worn photo

Of us on our wedding day

A couple of cubs

Not yet turned into bears

Not having become cannibals

Somewhere In Senegal

We are running on broken glass

Past startled zebras and giraffes

Baobab trees shaking from mortar fire

Would-be assassins gaining on us

With their armored cars

We only ever wanted clean water to drink

Shoes or shelter were luxuries we couldn’t afford

Our skin is ripe with sores, our legs rotten posts

We have nothing to offer but bones and bodies

And still the marauders advance with weapons firing

As the yellow parrot flies by like a hoax

Saying This way

Go this way

Here

Of My Father

The hands of my father could crush things

His stare lit forest fires and raised whole buildings

If he laughed you felt safe the way hunted deer do in the brush

I remember his breath smelling of motor oil and Old Milwaukee

His mouth a trapdoor or chimney

The heavy footfalls that meant emergency and danger

Being flung down a flight of stairs

Slapped on the thighs by black leather belts

In the photo I find of him he is younger than I am now

Holding a long-handled axe across his chest while smiling

When my daughter asks who he is I tell her

It’s nobody I ever knew

Paroled

Tonight I am searching for that boy again,

Age nine,

On the edge of everything—

A cliff, a catwalk, a firewall, puberty.

In this old photo he looks like someone with promise,

A would be astronaut or comedian

There is no car wreck yet

No dead girl

Or prison sentence

Simply ripe youth

I tuck the picture into my shirt pocket

Get out of the car

And as I make my way across the lot to be checked in

I tell myself that there’s

Still time for him to save himself

Once and if my son is finally paroled

Your Spot On The Mattress

The bed moves on its own volition

Like a slain elephant squirming away from poachers

Sometimes its sheets try to strangle

Pillows want to smother

Coiled springs search for a jugular

But there is no light in here

And the moon outside the window is shy

Or too embarrassed by my foibles

It’s been sixteen nights

A friend has recommended therapy

The neighbors cower and look away

My son says it’s not healthy it’s sick it’s not right

Yet I cling to the sheet anyway

The part with the large crimson stain

Where you once lay

I keep my voice soft and steady

Asking was it me

Tell me please

Was I the reason you did it

Clowns

The clowns they scared you

Worse than any monster

And it wasn’t until you called me over

Whispering in my ear

That I knew why

Crawl Space

Hey it’s me, hiding in the crawl space

With a faulty flashlight that keeps blinking off

I’ve been here fifty-five years

And as many days

You don’t believe me, I can tell

But there’s a reason I feel like a masochistic Peter Pan

You see

His hands were so large

His breath a fire

The things he did were enough to keep

A person enslaved forever  

Your Facebook Page

Even now I keep returning

To your Facebook page

Like a foolish and hopeful stalker

But nothing changes

The photos stay the same

No one posts anything

Except on your birthday

Because none have been told you’re dead

Happy Birthday, big guy!

Hope it’s great!

Hope it’s fantastic!

Hope it’s your best one ever!

I should tell someone to take it down

Or finally stop looking

But I loved you once

And now this

Is all I have

To remind me that you

Were actually real