Your ashes don't speak to me Dad;
they float silent in the ocean.
I need you.
I have questions about
Don Quixote and Steinbeck.
You implanted in me a
love for literature,
and then left me before
the story was supposed to end.

What is the theme?
This plot *****!
I inherited your anger.
I think of you when
I punch the wall and
scream at my wife-
spider web windshields.

I cry through Man of La Mancha,
and laugh at the memory of the
stage you built us in the basement.
Who does that?
Props and scripts were our toys.
I acted and lied my way through my
first two marriages- always on.

You were the great director;
all your trophies are on the mantle.
You thought the pizza place turned
the volume down on the T.V when
your speaking parts came on.

I think you passed me your insanity.
I've been to the nuthouse many times.
I'm a poet Dad, two books published.
I still remember you reading
Kipling and Cummings to me.

In third grade, I read from
Of Mice and Men to my class.
The teacher scolded me for
saying, "Jesus Christ' and "*******."
What a peasant!
She missed the bigger picture;
life doesn't go as planned.

Dear mom and dad, colleges been a whirl.
all nighters are common and I eat too much ramen but Ive kept off the freshman fifteen.
My friends pierced my ears and dad I'll out drink you with beers. But frat boys can be quite mean.
I took the car for a few trips outta state with my friends but I filled up the gas and didn't once crash.
I have a tattoo I haven't shown you. I really miss my old bed.
My friends got us a fish but that was a miss.
Then I broke my finger but the pain didn't linger.
I did get corona but after tacoma.
I kissed a few boys and made too much noise, but I did get to dance in the rain.
I showed my friend his first snow and watched my plant grow.

And although midterms made me cry, I got to watch the sky go from blue to pink with a friend

I'm just hoping it won't all end.

Whisper broken promises
I’ve heard them all before

Tell me all your excuses
I have them memorized word for word

Tell me pretty lies
Nothing you can do is new

The precedent was set before I was born-
Before anything had to do with you.

Just please promise you will stay
Because he never did.

Now I sit here and wait
Waiting for your text,
Waiting for his call,  
Or for the letter signed-
         Love,
                  Dad

If I once again saw the sullen and timeworn eyes resting not quite comfortably beneath his meager gray mane

I would be ever so quick to believe that his all too familiar, yet paternally foreign face has surely seen better days

Days which I for many a nights had precariously pondered the choice I had made

To not chase but to erase such a great yet fleeting charade

What I once held onto dearly as a weekly escape, a glorious escapade we could never sustain

you showed me love
you taught me the beauty of forgiveness
you taught me to laugh
but your eyes don't smile at me anymore
they're enveloped in a suffocating fog
this emptiness weighs
I can't find words
That can cover the silence you left

Your eyes don't see me
I talk to you and you don't hear me
I can't reach you
A layer of rubber covers you
I would like to tear it up
and yell at you
All my love
All the love you gave me
My pain feeds on
your unwitting words
Fragments of you lost
One tear at a time
Fragments of me torn
Thrown into your oblivion
A crumbling rock
I fight with a sword of nothing
I can't win
I can't save you
I can only love you

a mouse under a rock
she peers out to see the world
green! blue! white!
a stream, winding down the hillside
a lush forest full of life and breath
clouds that drift overhead
but the shadow of a predator falls
and sends chills down her spine
the mouse retreats.

a mouse under a rock
peeks out once again
sunlight! grass! wind!
the cascading of a falls not too far
a swimming hole, perhaps
surrounded in trees and mud
but the predator is back,
so the mouse hides again.