Lyricizes

My grandmother says we’ve brought her here to die.

Her paranoia probes under our fingernails
with a splintered stick,
splitting the tissue-beds, prying us apart.
We give her pills for our pain.

Her cataracts cloud over
her unlettered  bewilderment.
but she can still see old blood on the ceiling
of the state hospital.

My mother is wrung, she can’t sleep.
Guilt stretches out on her bed,
nesting on sheets of the unsigned hospital plan.

We’ve had to put a price on my grandmother.
The doctor at the private clinic tells my uncle
hip operations costs hundreds of thousands
and old people don’t make it that far.

Love them beyond
the first fallen tooth,
beyond the scrapings of their knees.
Love them beyond
the breaking of toys
beyond the whistling crack of voices.
Love them beyond
the down on their chins,
beyond the girls on their walls.
When you can no longer carry them,
This is when you must hold them.

Love them when they make your mistakes,
When your wisdom gets too small.
Love them when they leave you.
When their choices are not yours.

If all you know is what your father gave,
take it with its lacking.
Love with imperfection
and love your sons beyond.

I will chase your ghosts

on google,

search out your face

in every pixel,

pocket the sparks

your wit threw into the corners.

I knew a boy

who puffed and passed on the roofs of higher education

with women who did no good for him,

who had his open heart shat in,

who then faked it because it was just harder to be real,

who dreamt too big for his head,

who did too crazy for us all,

who grew up

to become a father.

We must let go of our heroes.
Not tie them to our sides
and hope they will bouy us to tomorrow.
We must breathe on our own.
Carry it forward.
Accept the living as legacy.

I could build such a life
on her bone structure.

I’d walk through my home
under those zygomatic arches;
shading me from one
dream to the next.

That hair weaves
winter warm
and curtains fall
when she closes her eyes,
the rooms ambient
with all of her.