A year back the phone imploded the silence
3:00 AM
A trembling voice released
Itself of words we knew would
Be spoken
In time
Yet none would have confessed the thought
Well….

Tense grey morning
The family gathered pensive
Surrounding the sterile intensive care bed
His home for 39 days
He lay
Heaving artificial
Needle bruised arms
Pale yellow body
Godforsaken

Numb grief
A gift bestowed
Questions unformed
Stroke his
Corn silk hair
Touch his nailess right thumb
Courtesy of an ax
When a boy
At his beardless chin
Shaven by necessity
At his hula girl
From the war
Knowing she will dance no more
At the ******* tubes
****** into holes
Where none should be

Soon suffering gives sway

Two days hence morning early
Threat of rain
We drove the quiet mile
Past the sanatorium
The orange water tower
The yellow house
The old Bayless farm
Up the winding gravel road
To Gouffon’s Cemetery
A rural small hilltop
Place of rest

Giant oak trees
Green fertile pastures
Blue distant mountains
Standing near red dirt
I recall Dad and I
Pounding tomato stakes into the
Compromising earth
Laying out plots for the family

On future Sunday outings when
Visiting this sublime place of relatives pass
Dad would often say as he smoked his Lucky Strike

“Some day I will rest here…with your mother there beside me”

Dad
For a long while I could
Envision you as you are even now
24 years later
With mom’s wedding band on your little finger
A pack of smokes and a half pint of Maker’s Mark
Photographs of the family propped against the pale creamy silk
To comfort you while you wait

The first year
Filled with dreams of you
Assuring
Gentle
“Son…it’s all right…everything is fine here”

Of you lying with plastic violating
Chest stomach neck
Not being able to speak
Bleeding
Asking me to **** you

Now

I giggle with fear and joy and
Love as you swim the Little Sandy
With my cheek meshed into the give
Of your shoulder blade and
My little arms and legs
Grasping for dear life
Around your flawless
Impregnable
Body

A blustery March day
In February
Leaves form a pigs tail for
The Devil
Doves sway common on wires
Makes me feel like
Jesus
It is happy here
Typical regeneration of entropy
Mountain fences zig-zag
Along side asphalt
Flake deed
Chalk angels blow
Blue wood wing in
Counter clockwise
Motion
Sentient white cat eyes
Knows me for what I Am
I cross myself
Leaves hover above a
Dead blackbird as if its
Resurrection
Were at hand

Just one photograph
A face – charm invests

To spy you white
Dressed in your garden of flowers among
The stones of those gone before –

Sensual music - pan flute lilting
Permeating all that is flesh
Spring wind kissing your pale body –
Teasing a glimpse of ******
A shade of possibility – the sun
Your shadow
Its light caressing a small body –
Petite with silhouetted legs
Inviting –
Your hand pure
A breast rising as fingers spread
Combing back silk black hair
Fallen to cover eyes blue deep
With dirt wearing hand
You bend to pick a purple Iris
Rubbing the stem between thumb and forefinger
Touching it                         barely
Before snapping it
Off –

Standing
Heated tributary streams of sweat
Flowing down your beauty
Your flawless flesh –
Gathers
Finding release
From pointed chin
Where my tongue would

With a quiver

Taste of you…..

Let us talk of this animal called human
Have they through the age of reason grown?
Give the answer if you are able
Why most are ignorant self important drones

Does anyone really care if Cain killed Abel?
We joyfully gnaw on each others bones
****** clear all are deranged unstable
Hurt children smile of lust make them moan

Little do they know these dead as they stumble on
All is arrogant emotion, true good has flown
Plight of human suffering even makes me yawn
I am proof the beast has ascended the throne

He wanted it to pass him by, not drink of his father’s cup
I say new seeds should be sewn, let us drink anew and blow it the **** up.

I sense life’s precarious balance    hushed
Stilled    moving to the negative
Our aging rusty colored companion
Lying camouflaged on his brown tattered rug snug
In front of the warmth of the fireplace
Appears uncommonly restless
The living room Kmart clock    a
Plastic cheapness hanging between two white candles
Gives a strike    a moment today or tomorrow

It is bloodless white mid-morning the dog with a start
Throws head back making tags ring letting loose a feeble howl
Our bodies give a quick convulsive ****.
Innate fear acknowledges.
Coming distant its portentous screams shatters    sneaks
Into being     matter of factly taking sway of our simple lives
We sit in coated silence awaiting the
Arrival.

Defeated we stand
Early frost beneath the skeletal body of the silver maple
Grey shapes emanate from the silent visitor
Take form holding her brown corduroys and red sweater

Mom is pushed by unseen hand to her kness
Head bowed no sound
Her only movement hysteria of shoulders.
The tree bark softens allowing dad’s right hand
His face bathed in earthly blood
Gazes upward      my eyes follow up through the maple
Autumn bared     the stars shine beyond the naked limbs.

“Mr. Lawson, we found this underwear along with the clothes in the trunk of a parked car out on Bell Road close to the pond. We’re going to get some more men out there to drag it.”

The underwear was stained with blood.

The family huddles around the fire in the sanctuary of home
As the nets sieve the frigid waters of the silent pond.

Darby jumps up onto dad’s lap
His hand unknowing strokes the
Reddish fur    his eyes as the dogs
Shut to offerings given
Mom sits in the kitchen on the
Edge of a wicker back chair
Taken from grandma’s house
She is holding sister’s white tennis
Shoes against her chest
Rocking back forth back forth
I stand with my left arm crooked
Around the back of her neck
Remembering we once went fishing
At the pond on Bell Road
The hand strokes her heavy black hair

Out the window first light
Shows the tree line of the ridge
The net is empty

Mom is done
She get’s up to brew more coffee
While dad and I go outside to sit on the grey flaking
Front porch and confront the passive morning
Absently I read the comics
Dad lights up a Lucky Strike
The smoke issuing from the mouth
And nose coalesces with that rising from the water
Laden grass     he looks at me
I put down the paper   helpless in the
Company of his pain
Flipping the **** onto the newly graveled driveway
He stands   releasing me
It is still
We listen silently to the lone ringing
From the bell tower of Corinth Church
Up on the hill beckoning the people to
Worship the Methodist brand of God.

Somehow I knew
Dad walks   then runs   toward an old woman
Coming from around the corner from
Behind the woods   she is stumbling
Along the roadside as if drunk or lost
The old woman begins to turn away but – doesn’t
Dad picks her up cradling her as an infant
He slowly walks toward the house
The silence of the bell a muted scream

She is covered in an old grey granny dress
Imprinted with small purple and yellow flowers
Her bare feet are bleeding

After the others had their fun
One of the six
A middle aged man
Had taken her to a dilapidated barn
With **** skins spread eagle on the walls
While moving the sharp edge of a fish cleaning
Knife up down up down between her labial lips
He offered “Cry and holler all you want! You have no home to go back to.
We burned it! Burned it straight to the ground with your precious
Family inside.”

After his play the man took her to
His grandmother’s house up on Ridgeview Road
Just a couple of miles from ours
The old woman looked upon her nakedness and
With the dress   blessed her.
From the vacuous room a whispered
“Jesus Forgive Us “was heard.