each night
he would enter his boy's room  
Bobby's tomb, he had come to call it  
and turn the TV off  

before remotes, 24/7 programming
and the infomercial, plump with desperate promises
the tube gave a final hail, the stars 'n stripes whipping, the national anthem screaming, and an anonymous promise
to return tomorrow in a perfect world

it would not be perfect for Bobby,
no matter how much thoughtless Thorazine,
hazy Haldol, or mesmerizing Mellaril
they shoved down his throat

now and then
before flipping the **** to off
he would sit with his sleeping son
stare into the screen, listen to its hissing;
he would swear he saw something  
in the gray ocean of static  

not trillions of senseless electrons
busy bouncing, but a lone sailor, rowing away
in a foaming sea, riding raging swells,  
bound for a black horizon

one his tormented son
had reached long ago

after dinner on the porch
was the best time, he and grandpa watching,
waiting for the storms--a thunderclap
the sweetest note to both of them

sheets of rain rolled across
the big pasture, downdrafts made the boy shiver,
even cradled in the old man's arms

neither would speak, grandpa's good arm
would point, or wave, these movements a code
between generations, theirs at least

finally a twister appeared in the west
growing plumper as it spun across the fields,
spitting gray dirt from its base, a zigzagging
dancer without a care in the world

grandma and Aunt Helen
fled to the cellar, imploring the pair
to follow

though they didn't, for all their hours
gazing at the heaving heavens would have been
profligate had they hid in the ground,
missing creation's greatest crescendo  

the angry funnel ate a section of fence
wide as a football field, and felled a tree
not a quarter mile from the house--its roots
too shallow, grandpa thought

when the tempest passed, the sun made
an appearance, slipping between the cloud bank
that birthed the tornado, and the silent soil
in the devil's wake

in its final moments,
it glared at the interlopers on the porch,
perchance admonishing them the promise
of its golden rays was no sacred contract
but a fickle gift

"instantly" doesn't apply
though we use the word to describe
an eternity that passes
before one’s eyes

in the flash flesh takes
to surrender, when a bullet passes
through a heart, a skull is crushed
in a head-on collision  

let me pause a hand an "instant,"
to make the car key turn, or the foot fall
from the curb a momentous moment,
later

altering all destiny, by chance,
if I had the chance, to be master of a tiny cogwheel,
of one machine--I don't need omnipotence,
only the reins of time

rummaging through the ruins
of the landfill, his sole fellow explorer
a cur, content when his snout sniffed mold
blissful when he discovered a can

his aspirations grander than the canine,
he hoped to find artifacts of the ancients,
and digging deep he did, an Apple, one of Job's
first magical machines, the monitor
dull but without a solitary crack

then a turntable, its diamond stylus
long turned to nub, veneer half peeled
by the blade of time--its final symphony spun
eons ago, or at least two dozen years

finally a Dr. Pepper sign, an old as time,
its 10, 2 faint but still there, its 4 long gone
the masterpiece's artist never lamenting
its weathered fate: he too had his time
his labors filling his pockets, pleasing
his eyes, and immortalizing him
in the open bowels of the earth

in Ohio, Mother
hung our laundry humming,
clothespins in her mouth

in Texas, she made my father
buy a dryer after angry wet sheets whopped her face
more than one blustery afternoon  

scarcely a score before
Panhandle winds were often roiling clouds,
black as charcoal, laying waste to everything
that grew and breathed

old men at the feed store talked
about the dusters from back then
and about every drop of rain,
every white flake that fell

I missed going barefoot
and fast learned to hate goat heads,
and all thorny things that thrived
in that flat land

Mother despised the hot winds almost as much
as the cool stares she got from the church women
whenever she opened her mouth, revealing
she wasn't one of them

Mother ended words
with “ing,” the extra consonant considered
superfluous at best, blasphemous
to some

men and women both
sounded to me like they had grist
from the silos in their mouths

my father had lived there
as a boy, swore he would never return
the dreaded dust still clinging to his clothes
when he left for the war

oil money brought him back
but only long enough for his skull
to be cracked dead by hard pipe

his insurance settlement
bought us a place in the Buckeye State
as quick as the lid flapped shut
on our mailbox

Mother wept little
until our first night back
in Ohio, when a blizzard knocked out
the lights, and our two candles burned flat
in the cold

my uncle brought bread, butter
and warm soup, which we ate in the gloom
while Mother told my father's favorite brother
how much we loved the Texas sun

we clock in, out
every one of us--that has ALWAYS
been the contract

the Tyrant has us all working
at minimum wage; some complain
others don't think about it

though at one time
or another, we are all grateful,
and terrified, we have a job

beggars, billionaires both
servants to the hours, His strange
circular command

but I will be dead ******
if I'll give Him a minute more than necessary
watching the hands spin on a timepiece,
eternally there to remind us, we are
temporal slaves, every minion
under His reign

he crawled from the slime
of the swamps, like a creature formed
before god made light

coated solid with the muck of the earth,
the blood of those they slaughtered, and that
of his own brethren--though the feverish foam
in these ancient paddies had wedded forever
the sanguine sap of them all

the sole survivor
to tell the old tale--the fable of light
giving way so eagerly to dark

who was he to tell the story
spared the wrath of the flesh
what of those who lay behind him
now forever silenced--had not they earned
the right to be permanent patrons of light

who was he to speak of these things
but it must be, for in the beginning someone
had to utter, with thunderous certainty, the
greatest promise ever broken:
let there be light