The Ghost of Cirrhosis

My father’s lost

from his corporeal form,

legs akimbo

down liquor store aisles,

with a love in his liver

for bitter bourbon solace.

Fish-eyed and floundering,

Dad gave up the ghost of cirrhosis

for the madness of King George

without a crown.

Do the Existential Queen Village Crawl

I crawl into my head

for the long winter

of my discontent

yet dread the company

I keep there.

Venturing outside my house

past cat cafes & coffee shops,

fabric stores & hair salons,

vintage thrift & restaurant fads

on my Queen Village block.

I am alone.

Thanksgiving Polaroid

Dad carves the turkey -

smoke in his mouth,

booze in his blood,

cirrhosis making plans.

--

Mom dishes side eye -

lightly sauced herself,

menthol smokes the light

and plans her germinating stroke.

--

Long shadows cast from both

on benders of their own -

stumbling Rorschach tests

splashing our dining room feast.

--

The aroma of pumpkin pie,

love and death

spreads outward from the kitchen,

unhesitant,

unrepentant,

silent.

election night

her beauty kept hidden
down doorways half broken -
his ugliness showcased
for american smiles.
their calling was sewage
for the feast of st. stevens -
but talents left dormant
for want of applause.
my eyes were but open
for the taste of salvation -
left out of reach
in an ampule dream.
puddles of empty
splashed boots made for walking -
nancy sinatra
through chloroform eyes.
cobblestone nose rings
through the snowdrifts of winter -
bloodied and cleaved
watching leave it to beaver
on tablets of apple
on tablets of apple
on tablets of apple

My father always had a lady on his arm and she was unfailingly naked. No, he was not a galavanting playboy or strip club devotee; rather, this was a tattoo that ran down his inner arm from elbow to wrist. It was one of the more visible, persistent reminders of the innumerable mistakes Dad had made while in the throes of alcoholic bliss. It was perhaps the single biggest source of embarrassment for the old man, who took to wearing long sleeve shirts at all times, even in the midst of a particularly noxious mid-August swelter. I'm guessing it was just too large to consider removal, at least with the means available back in the fifties and sixties when he might have been in the position to weigh such an option.

I never thought much of The Lady, and frankly don't even remember the details all that clearly. I think it adorned his right arm but maybe he had one on each; my addled flashbacks have been edited for sanity's sake and these bits must have been left on the cutting room floor. I do vaguely recall asking him about it as a toddler but the only really clear memories I've retained relative to this matter are the incessant threats my parents made as to just what they'd do to me if I mentioned "her" in front of others. The folks lived in terror of outsiders discovering dents in what they viewed as a lovingly crafted model of Leave-It-To-Beaverism. The truth is that dents were the least of this model's concerns when all that remained were gaping holes by the time the late 1960s rolled around, the ghosts of June, Ward, Wally and the Beaver flying off into the night in horror at being associated with our unique spin of familial dysfunction.

I think The Lady is the primary reason I never desired a tattoo of any sort and have never understood the appeal of body art in others, whether it be ink or piercings or like forms of self mutilation. In fact, I don't see the difference between a person with piercings or tattoos and the ragged razor scars of a cutter. Sure, there's an obvious difference in intent and the former might be more aesthetically pleasing than the latter; however, the psychology of intent can be many layered and not at all obvious to the conscious mind while aesthetics are, by definition, subjective.

A news recap this morning showing a group of Independence Day weekend revelers included a dude with what looked to be a very familiar tat running down the length of his Flexor digitorum and the hazy memories of Dad's ink-drawn Elke just sort of washed over me like a fog.

The 4th of July is often the time when my childhood remembrances come to the fore: it was my father's favorite holiday after Christmas and it was my mother's birthday. She'd have been 87 today. When Mom was celebrating her 41st birthday, my cousin Jennie (my Mom's niece) gave birth to her daughter, Lisa.  So we celebrated a lot of birthdays this day if you throw the USA into the mix.  Dad loved to buy and light off fireworks and we did so each year until my Mom had her stroke in June of '72 and Dad took his final plunge into the bottle shortly thereafter, never to return again until his body bobbed to the surface for a toe-tagged gurney ride to the morgue a little over 5 years later. But prior to this slide into oblivion, I had a giddy anticipation of each Independence Day that was only bested by Santa's annual sleigh ride.

Where I grew up, "Safe & Sane" fireworks stands started popping up in June all over the town and we'd peruse the season's "new" offerings with excitement. Really, there wasn't much new year to year (sparklers and snakes intermixed with various pinwheels, rockets, and fiery cannons). No firecrackers or bottle rockets or M80s and the like. They were certainly available on the sly but Dad mostly stuck with the legal stuff. After the fireworks were expended and we were done running across the lawn with fists full of sparklers, finished watching the "snakes" melt into the sidewalk where'd they leave a stain lasting the rest of the summer, sick of going 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the pinwheels and sparkle rockets as Dad ignites their glory; after all that, we'd go to bed and wake up again into the usual drama that defined our lives outside of the spell of the 4th and Christmas (and, perhaps, for a few hours on Halloween). Thanksgiving sometimes dampened our dysfunction, but just as often accelerated it (sort of like a gasoline-based fire extinguisher, if there were such a beast).

The Lady on the Arm and 4th of July seem inexorably intwined, even if the random news clip hadn't jousted the Freudian gnome living on the European continent of my subconscious to change the reel of my yesterday-dreams to Scenes of Dad's Ink-stained Other Woman. I guess it's because pop did wear short sleeves while orchestrating the fireworks, likely because the fear of polyester melting into his skin outweighed that of the neighbors eyeballing his epidermis artwork.

In the end, when Dad was cremated, The Lady on the Arm went the way of the fireworks that freed her for an annual night unveiled. I guess it was her destiny.

Ooh, Ahh.

A March without Movement

I awaken to the ground hard,

vestiges of melting winter come at me

downward from the slate stricken sky.

I awaken to the dawn

of madness bearing down.

Of b-ball bracket worship

and faux celtic drunk-fests,

of emergence from snow-swept silence

and the last gasps of ice storms fading

while the boys of summer stir to life

in grapefruit cactus play

and the alpine calcifying snow-bound zombies

recede into the mud

of fool's days to come.

I arise from my slumber

through a fog into sunshine,

floating past in a quandry,

stuck in stasis along the way.

I feel close to south of empty


yet still somewhere north of broken,

smack dab in a permafrost

of the perpetual in-between,

swept into a March without movement

toward teasing promises anew.

the frozen muddy

She is a whisper

of dawn

at midnight,

a sharp breath

of clarity

born.


I dream of nothing

but blackouts

and madness,

she is the promise

of morning

come dawn.

--

She is a figment

of my

exhausted pointless,

the last filament

of desperation's

hope

with daydreams of nothing

but delirium's

coitus,

disappearing

into shit storms

of shimmering sleet.

Damaged

down South Street's

filthy drifts devoid,

she is gone.

Leaving nothing behind

but the frozen muddy.

infinite dip

I am indeed terrified

of my own clear head,

horrified of the things

it'll see and hear,

of the things those things'll

make me feel.

I have not been comfortably numb

for going on eight years

and I miss it terribly.

The only barrier between me

and an infinite dip back into the pool

of oblivion

is a certainty -

plunging ever deeper  -

that I'd soon drown.

But as the embodiment

of an exposed nerve

rubbing raw against humanity,

I know such a barrier

is doomed to fall.

bicentennial christmas

A stone drunk Santa

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.

regret with whip cream

My mind is rarely made up,

always casual with thought

and broken teeth grinding quiet,

forever tiptoeing

past my good intentions

wondering if they'll forgive me.

My pain shoots at me

in response to inquiry,

missing again

the avarice

I want to own

but can't even borrow.

Meanwhile the siren songs of autumn

rise like Lazarus through the fall

in the guise of the suburban leafblower,

more certain than death.

autumn unfunny

There is only Carrot Top

and infinity to solve,

cold in the afternoon

with September waning

and October's claws

gnawing to unsheath.

downbound for the valley

I'm tumbling down the mountain of youth, 

faster to the valley of senility. 

Their voices down there

- cloaked in madness - 

grow louder to my ears. 

Still, they don't take themselves 

so seriously as the kids on high 

and their early bird specials 

are quite reasonable.

phil fish was right

sounds of my body

breaking down

echo down the hallway,

stopping at the can.

the noise from the weakness

is deafening,

the light from what's left of me

luminous no more.

i'm but the unfortunate consequence

of losing one's stomach

in all nonsenses of the term.

new keds shoes

crouched on the corner

of my childhood block,

the breeze of my past

damp down my neck.

--

glancing at the house

once holding me close,

keeping me sick

with wino bourbon blight.

--

my friends are gathering

in the cross corner lot

for remembrances of broken glass,

ghosts at play with new keds shoes.

--

i'm always almost with them,

dragging a bit behind

carrying shattered consciences

of errant kites fallen into power lines.

--

this gorgeous patch of suburbia

in its formative years

fills the caverns of my memories

with rosebuds and plum trees.

--

safe for a time

from our little house of horrors

where mom always said,

"don't play happy in the house."

--

or maybe she simply set the stage

for me to draw my own conclusions

of our depressive misdemeanors

with a fierce beauty all their own.

puddles and circumstance

Her foot steps drum

through rainbow puddles

staining sidewalks sleepy

in quiet after hours

broken but by laughing coughs

and distant sirens caterwauling

toward those unfortunate denizens

bested by circumstance,

beaten by this night.

goodwill sunflowers (van gogh on the cheap)

the pale green plaster walls crack

to a nicotine ceiling sadly

coughing up our acrid interior

hazy through their shroud of putrid.

--

a thrift store van gogh muses

from his living room perch on high,

they lie catty corner to one another

in fading upholstered coffins

numb to vincent's goodwill sunflowers.

--

sick, smokes, and delirium

and never ending bargain basement booze

flow by the hand-me-down television

tuned to unwatched watergate hearings

whose treachery can't be bothered

in this netherworld of ours.

Wonder of the Wenceslas Square KFC

She got drunk on a feeling -

I wish it were mine -

then left me

without ever having come.

She's a never ending angst

to those she inhabits

with herself more at ease

than a child's imagination.

She's my lost love, the wonder -

working the counter

on the late shift

at the Wenceslas Square KFC.

august '77

Elvis is in rehearsal for his last show,

polishing the toilet seat

for an audience of one;

the king can see that final curtain

rising through the mist

of his deep dried fame,

singing songs to himself

no one will purchase,

gummy through the cobwebs

of pharmaceutical sadness.

--

My father is in rehearsal for his last sale,

dampening the sofa cushions

for an audience of us;

my dad can see that final customer,

yellow through the mist

of cirrhosis fever,

speaking words to himself

no one will fathom

as they drown into a jigger

of bourbon madness.

--

The king and my pops

never made it to September,

dissolving into nothing

in the flush of the Summer of Sam.

Dyslexic Misanthrope

The softest side of empty

is plenty hard to live with;

the quietest despair,

a dissonant dementia.

I am a dyslexic misanthrope,

driven to self destruction,

content with self distraction,

left with self delusion.

I stand in repose

wrapped 'round life's tangle,

with the knowing smile

of a joke played on myself:

The horrific

and the beautiful

are but two sides

of the same straight razor

and Leonard Cohen called

to let you know

you need a shave.

Dance of Drunkards

The Wicked Witch of the West

was but a patsy

for the evil goody two shoes Gilda

perpetrates in perpetuity

on munchkins blissfully unaware.

"It's not easy being green"

is not Kermit's lament alone

and the companionship of flying monkeys

are a cold comfort indeed.

Thoughts of the shifting moralities

of these Ozraelites

haunt me needlessly,

like all good hauntings should.

Meanwhile, the cold rain

of February

bleeds wet upon the overcoat

as I remember Father

and his perpetual legs-akimbo

dance of drunkards,

steps as ageless as cirrhosis

scarring time

like the wizard that he was.

"Ignore the man behind the curtain throwing up onto his slacks.

The great and powerful Chuck has spoken."