i will post one last poem here. hope y'all enjoy.
Boo Ya, Motherfucker!
Annes dad died a double-amputee, legs lost
to a single-jungle-blast of Viet-Cong artillery.
Just joshin ya: he was as much of a soldier as
I am an astronaut, no radio to Cape Canaveral,
stranded for days in space, but anyway:
when the body fails to deliver blood to the legs,
they get gangrenous & swell like monsters
so he really had no chance.
But when you want to die, who can stop you?
God? Sobbing daughters, sobbing daughters?
The old dog with boogers on its legs?
The thought that your eulogy will consist
of hyperbole in 600 mg doses: enough to kill
an entire family of tiny Asturian horses.
An effective tactic to skip all the hoo-ha
& all the nonsense & snotty Kleenex is to eliminate
the eulogy entirely by hiring a punk band
to cover Summer of 69 for the funeral.
Too bad that he didnt think of that before he was full
of morphine, OxyContin, Demerol, nostalgia.
With all due respect, a suggestion: keep everything
upbeat by using the myxolydian instead of the major
& if it comes to it, the major instead of the minor.
My mom says that my life will be delegated to writing
death notices for the local newspaper, paying rent,
not becoming buddy/buddy with my fat landlord,
not staying sober, not stocking my fridge, not de-leafing
her gutters. I say, Well shit Mom, we cant all be doctors.
But I guess if I wrote the obituary, it would have to go:
Recent empty-nester, beloved father & husband,
former soldier lover of stout beer & old old Norsemen.
Never set foot in the ocean, but became a whal-
ing aficionado after reading Moby Dick; maker of shotty rope.
Survived by a mail-order bride, kissy kissy & Japanese-y;
two homesick daughters who do as they please-y;
fencewatching from the foyer, rewiring the defibrillator.
Before her dads cremation, before she called me
chockfull of runny-nose emotion, before I could say all
the wrong things, before I could tell her
that Ive always loved her & all of her lobsters,
he left one request for Death & Damage,
the end-all of all end-alls, written in Aramaic on a tablet
shoved in the wedding-day luggage: pray for us sinners,
now & at the hour of our deaths, eh man?
Boo Ya, Motherfucker!
Annes dad died a double-amputee, legs lost
to a single-jungle-blast of Viet-Cong artillery.
Just joshin ya: he was as much of a soldier as
I am an astronaut, no radio to Cape Canaveral,
stranded for days in space, but anyway:
when the body fails to deliver blood to the legs,
they get gangrenous & swell like monsters
so he really had no chance.
But when you want to die, who can stop you?
God? Sobbing daughters, sobbing daughters?
The old dog with boogers on its legs?
The thought that your eulogy will consist
of hyperbole in 600 mg doses: enough to kill
an entire family of tiny Asturian horses.
An effective tactic to skip all the hoo-ha
& all the nonsense & snotty Kleenex is to eliminate
the eulogy entirely by hiring a punk band
to cover Summer of 69 for the funeral.
Too bad that he didnt think of that before he was full
of morphine, OxyContin, Demerol, nostalgia.
With all due respect, a suggestion: keep everything
upbeat by using the myxolydian instead of the major
& if it comes to it, the major instead of the minor.
My mom says that my life will be delegated to writing
death notices for the local newspaper, paying rent,
not becoming buddy/buddy with my fat landlord,
not staying sober, not stocking my fridge, not de-leafing
her gutters. I say, Well shit Mom, we cant all be doctors.
But I guess if I wrote the obituary, it would have to go:
Recent empty-nester, beloved father & husband,
former soldier lover of stout beer & old old Norsemen.
Never set foot in the ocean, but became a whal-
ing aficionado after reading Moby Dick; maker of shotty rope.
Survived by a mail-order bride, kissy kissy & Japanese-y;
two homesick daughters who do as they please-y;
fencewatching from the foyer, rewiring the defibrillator.
Before her dads cremation, before she called me
chockfull of runny-nose emotion, before I could say all
the wrong things, before I could tell her
that Ive always loved her & all of her lobsters,
he left one request for Death & Damage,
the end-all of all end-alls, written in Aramaic on a tablet
shoved in the wedding-day luggage: pray for us sinners,
now & at the hour of our deaths, eh man?
hawksley:
Yeah, I like them...
cait:
DUDE! Happy Birthday!!! 
