My grandparent's house
ten-kid-large and sinking
on the corners of remembrance
Remodeled now, to
...tenements

Honeycomb
...the remnants

Irish immigrant and Scottish orphan's child
She sang on the ferry
He fell in love
"The rest is the history of us...."
Wide
as the Connecticut River, grieving--
in their sunset....
____

This-- chair
is his

I am afraid of it-- of his learning
of the shiny badge pinned to his coat
of his dying...
Golden leather of it
soothes
his memory--
of another continent
of the once warmth-- of a distant hearth
so darkened now--
where his head once rested
...his hands
and,
I fear--
his mind....

I will not sit in it
as if he will come back, to take his place
I am afraid of him--
with his chair--
all worshipful and empty
like a high place, abandoned
to the heart attack
not for grandchild play
Seat of Authority
still stamped
beside the standing cold--
brass ashtray
Pipe smoke imagines itself
against the ceiling in the words
of Yates and Milton
He read to them
and somehow--

Paradise is Lost....
_____

This house is cold now-- even in the summer-- cold
Worn as only large families wear
The War
of waiting shadows
--four brothers who were spared

Anna Mae, in charge, too young,
worries in abrupt dark
of dinning room
Her face, haunted--
an archway-- ever empty
by the large and ghostly table
covered by its web of lace--
a bridal veil
of Catholic impossibility...
Anna Mae, held hostage by her thoughts
of darling, Sean...

Aunt Lil's “breakdown”
with cigarette and thorazine  
quaking quiet in her corner

Aunt Nell,
as blind as smart-*** hell
ironing, darning
with threads that thatch
the wounded socks
Holds it all together, scolding--
Brought the welcomed jelly donuts
sneered as Yankees clobbered Boston
all-- while drinking yellow ale

Uncle Eddie-- laughing hoarsely
cracks nuts over a wooden bowl

Depression is art
The kind few actually understand
It's poetry is embodied in the paint
That covers the artist's hands.
And the canvas drips words
That fill up the empty space
With colors of black and blue
To fill up the feeling of grey
Within the emptiness
Of the corners of the artist's heart.
But the design isn't yet finished
The last stroke waiting to breathe
On the canvas to complete it
Before the world can see.
Slices of red added to the portrait
And specks of tears too
To complete the last touch
Of the masterpiece for you.
...
But you know what they say
Most art isn't understood
And the poetry behind it all
Is lost in the colors too.
For you would only know
If you knew this:
That the art was her soul
But the canvas was her **skin

from      time        to      time
there is     a romance      of being       alone
   the     imaginations       she  powdered
                                 generously    upon the   colorless  reality.
      metaphors   that  she sews    upon the   sleeves
                         of     melancholy.
her girlfriends   and she    roamed
                 the    ups  and     downs of the  earth,
while their        mothers screamed
                                    for   them      to be ladylike.
     saturday afternoons,
they   procrastinated    upon   pastries and     honey
                 crystallized           fairy      tales
courteous     animals
                                 riding on the      coattail of      dreams
      a lighthearted                feeling    others tried to      snooze.

they    observe things         through glitters    of their vapor.
    they   dote on the    humor of ice    creams
                       and sunlight       of   scarlet pink.
    as we    laugh    with charm,
                                            what a    way   with words,
                 a   lopsided    smile,
a      head    of   curls,
                                        a    flock     of  girls.

Everything has been a little broken lately:
The screens
The lights
The coffee machine
Me
Other people
The hours...
Well, mostly me.

Everyday,
I used to look forward to you coming by,
and pay for your orders with your reassuring smile.
But, ever since you left,
Ever since you stopped coming by,
Things fell apart.
Nobody smiles anymore,
Nobody wants to be here anymore.
Especially me.
But, I am still here
Waiting,
Waiting to catch up to the past,
that abruptly slipped away from me:
Those days that were truly happy,
because I knew you’d always be there,
Not matter how momentarily.

It was a graveyard and overcast sky
and I sat with book and accordian in hand,
hearing the world with its screams
swallow up around me.
The people whom I had loved and lost,
Papa with his silver eyes
Mama her sharp tongue and tough love
Rudy whose hair the colour of lemons
and questioned why, the living and dead,
worlds apart, yet both did not have a choice.
I stood and screamed so that everything shook
the burning rubble and ash and dust
willing my words to bring it all back
but it did not come, and my breath rose in gasps.
Death had looked me in the eye and said,
“It’s not time yet.”
I would shut my eyes to the world
only decades later.
I will understand that there was hate and pain
there was sadness
but even more so, there was love and joy.
I will know that the people I loved had reason
to kiss goodbye
whether it was their own hurt
or saw it as a necessity,
but they were never truly gone from me
always somewhere nearby,
in the thick and thin
frail and worn
of times.
I would learn
to forgive Death that day.
I will understand that
and I will be hurt,
but I will be okay.

~

Not all deaths are sad.
Some, meant to ease their own pain,
Are called freedom.
While some,
Meant to ease the pain of others,
Are called love.

© BT

Because sometimes you start to fly
And realize your wings were simply a web of lies
Tell me, when you shake off the illusion
Who's going to save you
When you come crashing to the ground
Who's going to catch you
When your heart catches up with reality
And realizes dreams are just that
That life's nothing but an anchor
Weighing you to the ground
So that only when you shut your eyes
Can you lift your feet off the burden
And grow out real wings to fly

What if
I write and I write
Until I have no words to say
(And since these lines are all I have)
I then wither of loneliness
And fade away....

What if*
Even worse off I'll be
If I shout everything
With my bleeding pencils
And those words simply bounce
Off the walls and echo
Never to be heard
But forever trapped
In the silent rooms
Inside my head
Torturing me
For infinity...