Tranquility,
serenity and at least one candle,
to represent all the hope that goes along
with all the things he doesn’t have the patience
to list off to forty empty chairs.

The five-hundred pound bearded lady
has thirty years worth of bride magazines
whooping it up in her kitchen, so why the hell can’t an old man
buy his own sixtieth birthday cake?

He feels guilty about
the firing range museum in his own kitchen,
the trophies he built with misguided inspiration,
so he’s diligent about doing the dishes,
and sweeping glass and cat hair off the floor

Every unharmed window
in the house is washed
twice a week.

Eight cats are unafraid
and sarcastic about bad dreams
in eight different ways.

His medals, newspaper clippings
and various jerk-ass honors
are in a pile on the living room floor.

He plans to make two once-and-for-all
piles of what to keep forever
and what to keep for now.

Thousands of suicide mission footballs,
bicycles, hubcaps, beer cans, prom tuxes,
fish bowls, novels, 1980’s handheld video games
and Frisbees work as drunken deputies of the streets.

If there was an attic,
the moon would have to shout
until it’s blue in the face
to exist over the gossiping clutter.

To see the world
he has to go outside,
and he never does so,
without bringing a pistol
for the fact that he knows
good and bad luck
are pretty much the same after a certain point.

His children?
You gotta ask?

We both know he never touched
that 1992 computer,
after his third son came over,
set it up and told him how to use it.

They then silently retreated
to the kitchen for shots.
Both of them knew full well
the violence that goes along
with that kind of thing,
when neither one can think
of a thing to say to the other.

His wife?
She left him for a Civil War hero,
and they travel around the country
giving cotton candy to the ever-growing poor.

He talks about these things,
to the newcomers in the third row
of those forty chairs.

He buys drinks for the one,
who asks the best questions.

He doesn’t come home until he’s saved someone’s life.

It’s also nice to pass by the holy figures,
who have sprung up,
in the ruins of some abandoned townhouses,
but it’s not essential.

09/18/2011

Posted on 09/18/2011
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