She’s Gone…
She’s gone.
I want to scream.
Weep in starts and fits.
Google “is it proper to wear khaki pants to a mother’s funeral”
Surrealism begins contracting her scales round my neck
Like water moccasins from Haiti seeking soul warmth,
Like Chinese finger traps tightening around skin and bone
Like virgin pussy gripping a warm cock.
Mom’s gone.
She wanted heaven.
Aimed for all of her children to be with her
Close together like enriched milk cleaving to Oreo cookies.
I’m drenched in Hades.
My body is the prayer, mom.
You’re closer to me than you think.
She’s gone.
She didn’t get to 104.
She topped out at 103.
103
The amount of wins the San Francisco Giants had in 1962.
The year I was born.
The year Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize.
The year of Longest Day. The Music Man. Harold Hill.
“The world needs rainmakers,” I think.
Shamans and charlatans.
Trickster raccoons and Shakespearian Pucks,
Glad fools who know why
There is never any dirt in Blue Bottle Coffeeshops.
She’s gone.
My Saint Mary’s high school class ring is gone.
Where did it go?
Do woman scan for ring placements on men’s hands?
Is it proper to wear khaki pants to a mother’s funeral.
Where does she end and I begin?
I want answers.
I want nostrums
I want to rage at the Hollywood billboards of scrubbed purpose
That endlessly ask for our considerations
And endlessly show the sonorous gazes of Olivia Coleman.
I want to rage at questless harmonies
At germless and excessive adverbs
At effete nihilism,
Meaningless nouns,
And the lifeless cynicism of well moisturized faces.
She’s gone.
She didn’t get to 104
She made 103
Do I wear khakis?
It’s short notice.
I’m larger than the special suit
I had made for her funeral inb 2011.
Do I wear khakis in a Catholic church
For my mother’s funeral?
Haitian snakes break my neck.
Chinese fingers turn my body blue.
Olivia Coleman smiles on the Sunset Strip.
Fits and starts.
I want to gag.
To vomit the lost jewelry stored in my chest.
The silver watch she bought for my 8th grade graduation.
My high school class ring.
I left them behind
She wore them.
I asked for them back.
She gave them to me.
I lost them.
Hatred and loss.
Where is the lost ring from my left hand.
Do women scan men’s hands.
Where is mom?
