william

what want you with my carton of marlboro lights, my man?

they are my comfort food for thought

and muse when chest's rattle wakes me, stumbling.

where does the wind go when the whispers of the dead condense

in new year's day post-

millennial fog, cruising by our lady of the highways whose

sure to float your sorry ass away? someday.

while you were smoking dope all day pretentiously

and mentally masturbating yourself blissfully into oblivion,

these words went on cracking themselves wide open with shameless candor

and making sure your cancer-ridden sixty-five year-old father

never left his comfy convalescent easy chair in the sun-bleached back

-snatch-back corner of that wissahickon nursing home again . . .

his brain makes sense of nonsense with the greatest of ease

and the grace of a ring worm working its way into flesh.

and it's more the cadence of the words that carries you than their meaning.

more the smell of sunrise that's scented then the act your myopic eyes don't clearly see.

winter days with new-fallen snow flit passed the open window-sill incessantly

and still you insist on telling me

these days grow longer with each clicking hour

and inhaling takes your breath away.

a stoner's revelation goes up in a cloud of smoke.

the day he dies

what new emotions will you discover then?

how much will you find

that above and beyond your best nightmares and worst sleep-walking dreams

you haven't freed yourself from the memory of his drooling jowls and quaking fists

at all, but that

you've truly sucked his soul down in through your lungs

and exhaled him through your very own existence

right back into the core of your bones.

the day he dies

where will the body be interred and the bills rerouted:

return to sender his restless spirit,

rooting through the slick soil of your guts; knocking at your belly button, begging for entry

and placing, quaking in your bowels, the feeling that

he'll stick with you in your moods and mannerisms for millenniums to come.

the day he dies, ask him and see what all he speaks:

where will your ashes go down, dad, when your world goes up in flames?

written 1.19.00