Sept. 29th 2020 (Quar)

 

Prologue:*

            This is my father’s birthday, now buried in the Mount Calvary Cemetery. Lost in prayer and thought having flash backs of a father never being there, mostly never here.

            Abandoned by his day-care giver (his wife), after abandoning him and the children, he was unable to deal with it alone. Sending the children to relatives.

1950’s Las Vegas Divorce **

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.”
Henry Miller

Sitting on the fire escape

he was waiting for you to save him.

He wallowed in his inability to leave.

 

Cheap hotel: bed without bedposts, no complimentary soap.

Should he sit tight waiting for you?

To work out problems never explained

between love, residence, and a person that only pays rent?

 

All he was asking from her,

is to save the last dance for him. For love, affection,

and a future without dereliction.

“Gosh, that is a nice dress.

Bright red with sequins and plunging neckline.

You never have gone out with me, looking like that.

 

Yes, I know it’s new.

To wear when the night has no moon.

To walk the cross walks under streetlights

 

glittering with nightly specials on your low cut- menu.

Stopping anyone who has only one feeling—

to admire your attire and everything that is underneath;

 soft, round, moist, short skirt’s unrelenting heat.

 It was me.”

 

 

Wielding a face like an axe,

he silenced any objection to negative gestures of guilt,

into words, into conjecture, into blame.

The truth as he experienced it.

Another act to repeat itself in disaster—

having to search in the clutter of useless feelings.

Like her first set of headlights, windows rolled down;

to her last trick— running on empty, but, never gently.

 

Cheap hotel, bed without bedposts;

stench of stale cigarettes and after shave floating

through the next rooms’ half-opened windows.

 

He sits there without the utmost concern,

or yearning for his guardian  angel—

or for the disposition of his soul.

 

watching another night fade into morning;

waiting for Eve

to come back

and save him.

 

 

 

 

 

* “Notes Found On The Refrigerator”

** “The Night Before Breakfast”