On the Occasion of my Fathers Death

Where had he gone?

The mad old coot

paterfamilias

dope smoker

lover of Cagney, Edward G, Bogart, Raft

Pre-code aficionado

Acid casualty

Poemless poet

hero/villain/antihero.

Movie gangster Big Bill.

A lover of life

swept into death.

My dad.

Where had he gone?

How had he stopped?

Stiff and white on his

unimagined death bed.

What fright, what fight had taken him

during the night?

What dream had stroked him

across what line?

I sat on the edge of the bed,

utterly alone in his room

held his white hand

and asked the ancient, trite questions:

What was this nothing whose hand I held?

What had been lost to turn him into this?

Where had he gone?

RIP (27/11/47 - 18/10/21)

Broken Mirror

He’s gone -

my trusty reflection,

the mad old bird whose cage broke,

and in small, nearly bearable portions

we miss him and then we laugh.

All the mirrors show his face;

the way I sit in a chair,

the way he ate an apple.

When I smile he’s there

smiling my smile

making a dry joke

of whatever differences

ever existed between us.

Green

sink down

the cows all killed
battalion said
root and branch were with us

hold your nerve
against tracer fire
that teenage girl
raped by your squad buddies

did we lose
at last the hearts and minds
The New York Times
called us cannibals and brutes

sink down
into indiscriminate war
it pays to be green
it pays to move at the same pace as the Lord