Black coffee
2 eggs looking at you
buttered Wonder bread
morning paper
horn rimmed glasses.
neatly pressed short sleeve summer shirt, with a Fruit of the Loom tank.
work trousers and oil resistant black shoes
Old Spice, and Brylcream
Howdy Doody in the background
the screen door slams
a white Ford Farlane 500 starts up and pulls away

awaiting the sound of the Ford
wash up for dinner
pork chops, sauerkraut
applesauce
green beans
evening paper
maybe the Flintstones or Dragnet, but always the Friday Night Fights
late night visits to the fridge for a sip of Malox.

My Father does not believe there is a heaven, or hell
he says when you die, you just die.
But I don't believe he ever knowingly lied to me.
He voted for George Wallace, but he also Voted for Barack Obama, twice.
He served in the Army during World War II, and still cooks hash brown potatoes every Tuesday night for his local American Legion, where he also plays poker and most of the time wins. When I asked him how to win at poker, he'd smile and say... "Luck." When I asked him how do I get some Luck, he said "count your cards."
He doesn't want a funeral, no music, no wake, no one to say anything about him. He wants to donate his body to science. And cremate the rest.
He says, "shut up and let people tell you who they are."
"Everybody is OK son , most don't know it though."
"Never count your money in public."
He has a small tin on the kitchen counter full of twist ties, hundreds of them.
There are shelves in the basement full of canned food and paper goods.
Depressionites are always ready for the next one.
When my Father and Mother go to their class reunion, they are the only ones left in their class.
I asked him what was the hardest thing about being 95, and both of them said, "all of our friends are gone, all of them."
My Father is 95 this year.

Happy Father's Day Dad

*Thank you for letting me ramble here, I feel so much better. I am ready to have my eggs and coffee now."

She was thin and svelte,
And when I held her, a perfect fit.
I’d caressed her face,
and she knew me.
My fingers found her every button…..and I could turn her on.

But alas,
she is like a fragile flower behind glass.
I have locked her in a dungeon,
safe from harm.

She wears armor like a medieval knight.
and has become an urban soldier.
Though still steadfastly by my side,
she has grown cold,
uniform,
vanilla…..
a number.

But sometimes late at night,
when they are not watching,
while the cruel and shattering world sleeps,
I slowly undress her,
take of her skirt of mail,
and in the fully charged glow of togetherness,
we are once again,
one.

*Uninspired after enclosing my new Galaxy s5 in an Otterbox.

The caves of childhood dank and gray,
hickory musk linger on their walls.
I hid there..... from words.

Words of a worn out relationship,
too tired to leave,
they wore each other down to a nib of a human.

What hell it must have been
to squeeze out a drop of peace from each day,
knowing there would be more words,
and another attritive tomorrow.

Meaningless rantings echo still,
stinging and bighting at my heart.
Words,  petrified me.

I do not want to follow them.
I want to seal the caves,
dynamite the portholes,
never to return to the words.
How so, these many years,
I find my solace in words?
But my words, are my words.
They do not berate, or demean,
for I watch them like children
crossing a busy road.
I place them on the page
with care and respect,
yet I know not from where they came.
These words that save me,
words that raise me,
words that knead me, into me.

1.
You can never go home,
not to the home you left.
When you leave, you get bigger.
Not necessarily in girth, but in consciousness.
When you come back,  everything,
even the walls of your parent's house,
seem to have shrunk.

2.
Look.....
Here comes the parade.
With its paper mache floats
and twirling batons.
Cub scouts and boy scouts,
all in a neat blue and drab green row,
followed by a high school marching band
playing "Stars and Stripes Forever".
From bygone wars, limbless surviving soldiers flinch with every cymbal crash.

3.
I watched billows of cottonwood clouds
swirl down a summer hometown avenue,
they met on the street corner for a song........
"Alley Oop", or "I Like Bread And Butter"
These ghostlike voices will live there forever,
innocent, asleep, numb, waiting.
Soon, the postman will bring your future.
Soon, you will be just a number on a lotery ball.
Soon, you will have to dissect luck or fate.

4.
I took my 87 year old Father to gather his tools
from his long time place of work.
The instruments of his livelihood.
He did not need them anymore, he had retired.
Some tools he had used since World War II,
some he made for a specific job.... never to use again.
All neatly placed in toolboxes built in the 30s and 40s,
yet not a trace of rust.
These were the tools of a tradesman,
a (Tool and Die Man).
He once told me, “Son, if I can’t fix it because I don’t have the right tool, I will make the tool”.
I thought him to be Superman.
But there I was, loading up my Father’s history,
to take home, to be sold to the highest bidder.  
I myself have made my living playing music for audiences.
I also have tools.
Guitars, amplifiers, harmonicas, microphones.
There will come a day, in the not too distant future,
when I will have to “retire” the instruments of my livelihood.
Though I will not be as stoic as my World War II Father,
I will go kicking and screaming to the pawn shop,
remembering every song that fed me,
and every chord that made people dance.