This morning’s coffee
tastes like resignation,
however,
I’m in the mood for redemption.
Category: addiction
Categories
no demons may cross my cumberland gap
you can’t get from her desert south west to kentucky
the archway of plenary indulgence is not her path
demons choked on fear and comeuppance lose their way
oh ye of little faith
was there ever any doubt
Jesus was from Elyria
that Ostara was from Kentucky
and that Lazarus was from Newark, NJ
but he got stuck in traffic for 10 years
on the high roads of rt. 80
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ATM
They
will sell you
candy cigarettes,
insulin,
Camel Wides,
chemotherapy,
God,
nicotine patches,
life insurance,
and a bronze casket
all
in one lifetime.
two decades ago i took
an overdue trip to Central Ohio
introducing my former mother-in-law to her six month old twin grandsons
we got to talking about Kentucky
as all transplanted Kentuckians do
we bounced gurgling baby innocence on our respective maternal knees having our own little gossip social
curling wispy baby hairs in her worn fingers
her laughter turned to pained breaths
as she shuttered out
a mortifying truth
about a bluegrass upbringing
she was discussing how she had been repeatedly raped as a girl by her father in Hyden, Kentucky
ran away to something worse at 14
how her first marriage ended when she found her alcoholic unemploymed coal miner husband was molesting her two little girls while she was waitressing to support the jerk
fleeing north to Ohio with them
to single motherdom with three kids in the 1960s living in a car until she could afford a place to rent
tears streamed down
her withered cheeks
as she said
“A girl child isn’t safe growing up around a family of men in the South.”
20 years later i think of her words and the women in my biological family
four generations of women who tried to protect their genitalia from one family member
the irony of being expected to smile and pretend
give forgiving hugs
that i’m the one who doesn’t feel comfortable coming to the Thanksgiving table
not the man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself
bravado poet he was
and i dumbly followed
fully knowing
his titles were shit
with a snake oil smile
performative assholery
but it took a near death
blood loss event
near wild boar swamps
in an Arkansas tar pit
to see
the true excrement
was the content
of his character
it was a hot wednesday afternoon
i saw her downtown
this old high school classmate of mine
valedictorian of her class
hanging like a drying dish rag
on the pock-covered arm
of her fourth divorce
they looked like they had just driven in
from a northern shithole township
to taste
of the urban opioid market
oh,
merri smyth
merri smyth
full of
such
promise
please
tell me this
how is it
you are not
an astrophysicist
instead
a
mother of seven
living and dying
on public assistance
Categories
master class
i suppose you could say
i’m one of those people
who has seen more than their
fair share of things
you will certainly find
me adept
in a broad range of topics
from culinary techniques
to obscure music
embalming
comic books
addictive substances
and
lesser know shitty diners
of the northeast
some of it owed to college
and my need
to join the rat race too soon
mostly it was my proclivities
my insistence on taking
a master class
in dating old fucks
what an education
you should’ve stuck around, Dad
antidepressants were only
a few years away
or smoked pot
hell,
it’s so ironically wrong that you obliterated yourself
in Kentucky
when marijuana
was the top cash crop
in the state
Categories
fuck you, all the same
as the days pile up
flash bulb memories
are what i remember
of the alcoholic father
the alcoholic first husband
the drunken loss of a decade with the blue eyes
it may be a disease but that makes you no less vile as a person
there’s no excuse for
trembling as my dad threw a giant television set out the front door into the yard
stairs turning upside down as the father of my sons headbutted me into submission
for wanting to leave his dysfunctions
threats of handguns and bodybags
that’s booze soaked rage
a blitzkrieg of anger
a pot boiled over
every tea kettle in the world simultaneously
spitting steam
screaming