Father used his fists
a lot
Though never on the kids

On the walls
and the furniture
and the doors
and the mailbox
and the fence
and the neighbors
and random people on the street
and strangers in the bar
and a few times the poor dog
and one time on mother

He was the childhood’s
villain

To defeat him one had
to become a hero

and becoming a hero
took time

And today
after all this time
the villain of childhood
was dead

He died at the hands of
some other character,
a neutral one

A cop who told him to
drop to the ground
and father didn’t
so he got shot

That was it
The end of his saga

Utterly unsatisfactory
anticlimactic
disappointing
just bad

There was no final showdown
between hero and villain

because those things
only happen in
childhood
and childhood had ended a
long time ago

he spent four weeks
away from his family
in a rented apartment
somewhere on
the outskirts
of town

he told them that
he needed this
he was a writer
needed to focus on his work
conducting his research
undistracted

his little girl would call
from time to time
asking daddy to hold his
phone against his forehead
while she made a kissing sound
on the other line

very wholesome
except he lied about
holding the phone
against his forehead

“How can you be
such a monster?”
asked the naked *******
sitting on the edge of his bed

“Shut up,” he said
tossed his phone on the desk
and unbuckled

Wherever you hear about a drinking
problem
you expect the man to be
violent and ****** and turn abusive
and destructive

well
it wasn’t the case with him

There was a drinking problem there
for sure
but all it cursed him with
was sleep and sometimes
verses

He’d start writing after
drinking

But he was a kind man and a great
lover
and his wife had a hard time
convincing her family and friends
and neighbors
that a man who has a separate trashcan
only for bottles and beer cans
is not a man who strikes his wife,
not even with words

Well, none of
them read his poetry

and by the time he died of
cirrhosis it was
too late

You can’t scold a dead man for
having written thousands upon thousands
of pages of
splatter-punk gore and abuse fantasies
involving his wife
her family
her friends
neighbors
and everyone he knew, including minors

“and I still hadn’t changed my
opinion,” she said. “I still
believe that
a double suicide is the absolute
highest
display of love there is. Think about it,
two lovers dying in each
other’s arms. What in hell
can be more romantic?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “staying alive
for each other’s sake, maybe?”

“What? That’s, like, not
romantic at all. The longer you stay alive,
the higher your chances to fall
out of love. Nothing
chews at love like life does. That’s
why death is the answer.
It’s the only way
to immortalize love. It’s the way towards
that plane of existence where all
you feel is love and nothing else.
I wanna go there!” She squeezed her fists
and eyes, braced herself as
she said it.

“Well,” he said, “We’re both out of a job,
unwanted by family, no home,
no cash, no future…”

“All we really need
is love!” she screamed, jumping into his arms

“Yeah,” he said, “and an overdose.”

“I’m with you, dearest cousin!”

there were times when she bit and
chewed the inside
of her elbow

to spit the bits of flesh
and the blood
on her grandma

but those times were over

almost forgotten

along with the teachings that
her blood is poisoned
because she was conceived with the
wrong woman, meaning
not the one grandmother intended for
her father

But today all those
people were dead. Only father was
alive

He was all right. A hard working
man, busy with life

busy enough not to notice
that his daughter
is constantly sprinkling ashes in
his food and coffee

He’d almost consumed the
contents of
his mother’s urn

there’s just
a bit left

“I was ten years old,” she said,
her head resting on
my shoulder. “And the flames
covered the **** sky. Though our
neighbor was actually
lucky. Lucky I
didn’t burn his house. I mean,
******* had it
coming. You don’t run over a girl’s
puppy and expect to
get out scratch free, you know?”

“I too had a neighbor
who ran over
my puppy with his tractor,” I said.
“I think I was also around
ten.”

“And what did you do
about it?” she asked

“Nothing,” I said

“What? But how?”

“Like I said, I was just some
insignificant kid from
the countryside. All I could
do was cry.”

“My God,” she said, “that’s so
******* lame. Where’s
that neighbor of
yours today?”

“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’s dead.
He was pretty old
when it all happened.”

“If that’s the case then
you have the duty to
go **** on his grave. At least.”

“Um… I wouldn’t know where
that is. And besides,
I learned to forgive.”

“That’s what the weak say. What
kind of man are you?”

“One who doesn’t hold grudges?”

She sighed. “We gotta spend
more time together.”

“And learn from one another?” I asked

She didn’t reply

the dreams of drunks are the strangest
and often most beautiful

It’s what he
came to think this morning
after he woke up with
the empty glass under the blanket

Surely it was that glass
and the liquor in his guts
that made him dream of a frozen woman, clear
as glass

She smiled at him
with diamond teeth and stooped like only
a professional stripper could
next to his limp body

She rolled him onto his belly
and his limpid, numb eyes
watched her grow an icicle from between
her legs
but they closed by the time
she carved a hole into his liver and
began to **** him until the
ice melted

That was a nice dream,
he concluded

And tonight he’d go to sleep
with two glasses
and a bottle under
the blanket