It's either a menace or a nuisance.
You don't know it's inside the walls until
You hear it. Miles of wire, humming
With current. Power lines, transformers,
Radio waves, microwaves, radar. Keep
A vigil or those transmissions unravel
Inside your ears. Every phone call, talk show,
And radio jingle all at the same
Time that you can't turn off. This is how God
Must feel, but instead of omniscient you
Are insane. Love will drive you mad, but the
Silence of heartache is worse than
Static from a television, it's loss.

Dad liked the bottle so much he never let go. I didn’t enjoy the taste, some kind of stale licorice, bitter, thick, and smelled of death. That’s how he died. Kidney failure, liver damage, yes, but choking on his ***** is what did him in. Since Mom has been gone longer than I can remember, he was alone that night, and I don’t want to take responsibility, since I was out with friends, but I can’t help myself. Not that I feel bad about it, I’m glad. And I think I feel more funny about that than not being there to see it finally happen. You can consider me an orphan, now, I guess. Technically, I have no parents, and that’s what an orphan is, right? Excuse me if I sound rash, but I’m supposed to feel something, aren’t I? I never loved-loved my father. But, with the help of my mother, he gave me life, after all. He always said, when he wasn't drunk, that I had her eyes. Her eyes, I’ve been told, were beautiful. You can look into them and forget your birthday. These eyes of mine have gotten me in trouble, just like Mom. It’s her fault, that’s what I say. If she hadn’t left that night, she would still be around, and Dad wouldn’t have had to find love at the bottom of a bottle. I hate her. I hate her for leaving. I hate her for making me me. I’m alone now, and it’s all thanks to her. This is my strongest feeling, when I should be mourning my poor father, I’m hating my wicked mother, who left our home. Nothing will bring them back, neither of them. Even if she’s still alive today, she is as dead as Dad. They were weak and so am I. Does that mean I hate myself? That smell, it’s not smelling so bad now.

Denture correlation
Cause a malaise of arbitration
And fuel the fires of disagreement.

My mother left on Sunday.
A ghostly presence walks the
Wooden stairs and flicks the finger-smudged
Spindles lining the path
To my parent's bedroom.

Clocks chime the hour, their bell-
Melodies insist mnemonic
Memories
Of her infinite delight.
She loves clocks. She'd often wake
Before us and sit in her
Favorite chair to listen to
The effect of their orchestrated
Sounds.

They have a white noise quality
More musical than whirred fans
And insistant television.
I've met this sound-off
With distaste.
Since her absence my distaste has transfigured
To homesickness.

The heart throbs in shadows.
I'm a clock whose white face has aged yellow,
Without hands to signal the hour,
With a song on a dented bell.