a life of a ghost man

It is hard to believe in a dead man,
a ghost,
a life,
a life of a ghost man….

a life that hands my limp direction
over to those that can control it.

They must have told him,
the people,
that his core was rotting,
that his brain was infested and crumbling?

That his daughter was sick with
raw nerves and would never get better?

If the bombs in Vietnam hadn’t sawed his
spirit away,

if his own father
hadn’t dangled lily liver from
the ceiling,

maybe he would have heard
the people,
the ghosts,
the whispers of his daughter’s twisted,
raw nerves grasping
for contact

and saved me from rotting with the same
crumbling infestation.

The Dark Island

A gold poetry rests under hand,
he was a painter and
a wrinkle in life.
I am his daughter.

On his lap, music
listened to my breath,
he was a sweet harmonica
smothered in vodka.
I was a drinking flower.

I scooped his footsteps with
a shovel and
slept in his smokey shadow.
In his order, a drunk soldier.
I am covered in armor.

He coughed,
and spewed me
out into a cold ditch.

One day, I painted him red,
myself blue,
and put him in a box that
blocked the sun.
I drifted with his body
along an eight year ocean,
until I became this,
a dark island.

My Dad And His Dad

My father is ham,
sliced on the floor. Pulsating.

He is dying.
Without eyes,
without feet,
hands,
liver,
or lungs.

I watch his respiration’s as
they slip, so slowly,
away.

Now is the time for tears,
but where could they be??

He already died in a dream.
When I was young, I watched
his casket get planted in
the ground.
My grandmother was headsick!!
Father was not a seed.

He was a musician,
and a bum with a harmonica.
A bastard!

He watched his father die, also.
His father was not ham.
He was on a rope,
dangling
like a pinata for a child’s birthday.