slow jams through our home,
his long white beard
reduced to patchy stubble,
rosy cheeks
gone yellow & hollow,
chubby physique
now stick figure thin.
Dad's lifelong passion for oblivion
once curtailed at Christmas
in deference to us kids
could no longer be,
such balance now beyond his grasp,
chased away by the ghosts of cirrhosis
gnawing at his liver.
This last Deck The Halls,
sipping Cream of Kentucky
libations through a straw,
when even prayers to the porcelain
or the rug or the sink
are unable in the end to stave off the slab
and a date with a toe tag
come the swelter of August.
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