Like a young schoolgirl she flirts with the orderlies,
skid resistant yellow stockings swinging beneath
her wheelchair. Yellow defines the wackiest of the bunch.

She scooches across the room,
strapped in like a child in a car seat,
her socks providing excellent traction
on the shiny grey linoleum.

To see her this way is a bit shocking,
she speaks in a child’s voice,
like a little girl at play,

its such a strange sensation,
it reminds me of the time in the seventh grade
when Mr. Coster told us about the ghosts
in Sunnybrook’s basement,
I find myself questioning reality,
looking for ways not to believe.

At first she wants to pray,
and while our heads are bowed
she talks directly to Jesus, “there you are!”
she says, “and what a pretty blue sash you have on!”,
I steal a peak at the door
to see if Christ is there.

Next she wants to sing, and away she goes
while the girls join in….

The doctors say she’ll never again be who she was,
the mini strokes have done away with her.
I quietly concur and tell myself its not so bad
to see her this happy.

But within a week they move her to long term care
and all hell breaks loose.

“I want to divorce your father!”, she snaps,
“I’m tired of his ****”.
But when he comes to visit she purrs like a kitten
about undying love and how she’ll only be happy
when she dies in his arms.

The reality of her dysfunction
has never been more evident.

My whole life is a byproduct of her chaos.

Her eyes begin to take on
the wild look of a crazed dog,
She slips me notes and whispers strange things,
like she’s being watched and needs to be careful
about speaking too loudly,

I desperately try to make sense
of what it is she’s saying
but I’m completely distracted by
the lady across the table
with the television remote control
in her mouth, clamping down firmly
as if it’s a candy bar.

Mother goes on and on about
a job offer she’s received,
an offer to teach a sewing class,
she’ll need some good quality shoes
if she’s to be on her feet all day,
and maybe a few new blouses,
and oh how she’s tired of pajamas.
Next she’s on to requests for crayons
and batteries, a new mattress, more light..

She mumbles now.
Stream of consciousness ****.
She’s crying more as well.
Heaving sobs rack her body
as she bounces up and down,
hands across her face in an
over-dramatic display of despair.

Its my last evening with her.
I’ll be leaving shortly.
She’s not in her chair by the window.
I find her in her room lying in the dark.
I sit on the edge of the bed and touch her forehead.

She opens her eyes but does not see me.
She is still and silent and I notice she is clutching
the blue plastic Jesus I gave her, two inches tall
with arms outstretched and the message “HOPE”
scripted on the base.

I begin to stroke her hair, long, gentle strokes
and she sighs, A long broken sigh like
one might give after a good cry.
I half expect her to put
her thumb in her mouth.

Instead she lies silent holding her Jesus
while I wonder if the blue is the same blue as
the sash of the robe he wore the week before
when she was happy.

It’s a heavy moment for me because I know
that I am giving her what she could never give,
that nurturing touch that says its gonna be ok,
the reassurance that though afraid, you don’t have
to be alone, and the full and complete knowledge
that you are loved.

I wish she would say that she wished
she would have been a better mother,
a loving mother, but she cannot because
she is on a rocket ship to outer space
and I know this,
and its ok.

Though she was incapable of
loving me as a small boy
she became able in later years
to light a spark in me for Jesus.

A spark that would grow into
a burning flame of comfort in troubling times,  
a flame that would do more for me
than any mother's touch,
at least that’s what I’d like to think.

A flame that would ultimately
teach me how to love
in spite of never being loved.

A flame that is empowering me
to stroke her hair and give comfort to
a mother who never loved me
the way I needed to be loved,

the way Jesus loves me,
with his arms wide open and his light blue sash,
standing over the letters H O P E…

I get up to go
and see that she is now sleeping.
I watch Jesus slip from her fingers
and fall to the floor,
watch him bounce a time or two then
disappear beneath the bed,
like when you drop a coin from your dresser,
and it ends up out of reach.

I leave her room wondering
if I’ll ever see her again.

I step out into the night and go home.

We sat there drinking baring are souls and cutting through ******* one drink at a time.

I never hung around other writers I wasn't  a people person to begin with.
Silence was its own company .
And a man who could hold court with it and remain sane was stronger than most in a crowded room.

We poured the drinks and spoke of everything aside from the page.
To generals seldom give away secrets to there success or in are case the lack there of it.

Are scars were are own and my friend knew enough that we simply held court and stared  at a woman bent over the jukebox.

Some lines are not written but are simply perfect enough as is.

We sat there till we closed the place down and vanished back to are own worlds .

We were wolves to the hunt all the same and are paths seldom crossed again.

Sometimes you howl into the night and somewhere from the depths the night howls back.

Sometimes its good to know another runs the same as me.

Why do we Hallmark our holidays and fabricate ceremonies?

We guilty non-obligators celebrate all things that can't be true,
forcing smiles in rooms full of elephants yet no one’s a candidate for sainthood.

I tell myself I’ll do better than they did, but doing better than they did
still leaves roles un-played and dreams unfulfilled.

I may understand life from the top to the bottom but I live in the dash between the hair of the dog and last call.

While people without broken bones wander around on crutches,
we who were broken as children walk on feet-less legs,
a trail of pain follows wherever we go.

Its inevitable for us to get stuck between bitterness and agony while all the while we fail to make sense of what it is we're living for.

I don’t want to be celebrated I’d rather be understood, so maybe then the searing heat of loneliness we never speak of might die a slow death.

I only wanted for you what was better than what I had
not knowing that without the bad there is never any good.

Every left hand turn leads to something right eventually
and when we exist for only ourselves the world is not round rather flat and we tend to fall off the edges into pandemonium and unhappiness.

Its not what we have it’s the pursuit that keeps us going but I need to not want in order to feel what I feel.

To sit still is more consuming than any long term project.

When I have it all I have nothing,

an uneasiness with the easiness of stress free living,

a simmering flame of doubt about all that's gone wrong in my life while things that happened 30 years ago feel as fresh as tomorrow.

I read an article today that said the drug ecstasy can take away depression but we all know lots of pills can do that.

The bottom line in all of this, I wish I had a reset button, a restart after false start, a wake up to reality call, I'd throw away the wigs I wear, powder coated cover ups,  and let my hair grow long,

get back to the basics,

maybe start with Bukowski,

celebrate the simple things in life.

I never really felt as if
my mother had it all together.  
Her torch was
a brittle twig she couldn’t keep lit,
never enough stick to burn bright,
but just enough tip
for random flare-ups
violently fueled by
nobody knew what.

Her lack of light meant
she could not be trusted,
and her strained attempts at
love and affection felt like
a dream where
everyone’s speaking Japanese.

Her marriage to my father was
the modern day equivalent
of an interracial same *** marriage,
Catholics and Protestants
weren't supposed to mix,
and a toothless trumpet player
with an alcoholic bent
shouldn’t have lasted the honeymoon
with a spoiled, sheltered oldest child.

But father made it seem as if
they had it all together,
at least in public.
At home it was different,
he passed through our lives
like the winter wind,
everybody scrambling for cover
when he showed up.

He slept at odd hours
and worked and drank
and drank and worked,
blowing quickly from one
to the other, 
never standing still long enough
to notice the demons at his heals,
the demons that took forever to catch him,

but not mother.
They caught her when I was quite young.
I could see them in her eyes
from a very early age and
father could see them too,
but he did nothing
to protect her.

They’ve been together
over 60 years now, overrun by what
I would call a thick purple nothingness –
an eerie, detached existence within
the smothering cadence of monotony,
yet somehow, unbelievably,
they still have hope.

Hope for God knows what

all they have is their
unspoken hatred of each
wrapped up in a make believe
so strong and lived so long
that their demons are now
a huge white elephant
lounging about the house
loosening their bed screws,
pounding on the bed springs,
moving through the vents
and interfering with
the reception of Catholic radio.

You might call it insanity,

I say everything that
once mattered to them is lost,
yet again,
they still have hope.

Meanwhile
we overachieving children
suffer our own maladies,
a misfit bunch of
dysfunctional lovers running so fast
we’ll be 80 before the demons catch us.

But who am I kidding?
From father to mother to me,
their demons have been my closest friends
as long as I can remember,

ever since the first day
I saw them in her eyes.

He enters the wood
without wanting,
taken from slumber
and pushed from behind
into darkness.

Up ahead he sees light,
he wants to believe
he always sees light,

but lately its not there
and he cannot see,
and they’re not at home.

He’s becoming afraid
to close his eyes,
no telling where he’ll end up,
skirting the edges of
the unknown.

He wonders what’s beyond,
a cliff, a hole, a vacuum,
insanity hovering over the
sprawling darkness of Hell.

He’s never been
though he thinks he can taste it,
it tastes of fear,
dark and gritty like burnt toast.

His only hope in
the little white diamonds.

When he swallows,
their edges work to scrape
the darkest burn away.

'All swim' whistle,
water sent splashing,
the chaotic entrance of youth.

Adults scramble in the melee
while a man I do not know
bumps into me,
his hand down my shorts.
Confusion.

I ride home in shame.
Silent. Burning. Shame.

I am only 10
and tend to wince
at loud voices,
and right and wrong
depend upon the
time of day and
how many beers
my father drinks.

Country roads whip by,
sweet corn in the wind,
I watch the sun set
over the hill.

Once it's gone I know.

There will be no redemption,
 no reclaiming of innocence.

That shame feels like swallowing hot coals is all too familiar.

Mother says, “You don't look sick to me",

it's her answer for everything.