When I found out you were dead,
I looked at your photo on the mantle.
It seemed older now, your crooked smile
and that Budweiser hat you always wore.

What is it about dying that gives
our portraits a new power of time?
A drunken nostalgia pushing tears
down over our eyelids onto our cheeks.

When I look at your photo on the mantle
I feel a creeping thought crawl through:
"You seem like the one who'da died."
Not fate, not destiny, definitely not God,
but a part of who you are, the man we knew
had a trait that fit death so sweetly,
like a sad song from 1961, and a line we loved
about old cars and holding on, just a little while.

You seem older now, you'd be 33 this year.
Your crooked smile would be different,
and that Budweiser hat you always wore
wouldn't fit as well as in our photos of you.

Do you remember me?
Do you know who I am?
You don't remember these soft drown eyes
Staring into the vacant depths
Of your glazed over eyes
Donut wholes on your sunk in face
Mother, I'm that 13 month old baby
You abandoned and never looked back on
I'm the nuisance in the back of your head
Wishing you would wake up and feed me
Change my soiled diapers
The way you should change your habits
Mother, pleas I'm begging
I'm crying tears of snowflake shadows
I need you yet you're not there
You're two inches from my face
Crashing into couch cushions
Like suicide bombers
Needle stil stuck in your arm
Filling your veins with a substance
That prevented you from loving me
Hello...mother
Do you remember me?
Do you know who I am now?
I wanted you to love me
Tell me bedtime stories
Keep the nightlight on
Long enough for me to fall asleep
Unafraid of what the shadows hold
Tuck me in and kiss me goodnight
Like the moon itself
Every night to the rest of the world
I want to be your world
Drenched in your loving moonlight
But no, the drugs you overdosed on
Prevented you from doing just that
And you still haven't learned your lesson
You called me several times
Telling me you love me
That you're sorry for leaving
But within the 5 minutes
It took you to choke your tongue
To say even one of those words
You sail away on that kite
Crash immediately into my heart
Causing missile words to bombard my walls
Calling me worthless, pathetic, and a waste
Hello...mother
Please remember me!
Please remember who I am!
I'm the baby you refused to hold at birth
I'm the last child of four
You wish you would have aborted
1 month prior to my concieving
Hello...mother
The late night hours of needles and pills
Powdery white lines cut like a chef
Must have erased me from your life
And if I could bleed every drop of your blood out
I'd carve canyons in my wrist
Let loose the dams
Drown in the wake
I don't want to be your son
I want to be the child of four you never had
Hello...
Forgive me for this
I know you don't remember me
I know you don't know who I am
But I hate you
I can only thank you for making me a poet
Giving me this curse
Because I'm no longer your puppet
Or your voodoo doll
With 12 needles in his chest
I'm the kid you will never know
So this greeting shall be as strangers
You never cared to know me
So this farewell shall be as strangers
Goodbye...
                  ...Mother