The Cheap Yellow Chair

My father bought a cheap yellow chair
It sat next to nicotine tabletops
That allowed him to ride that coffee up
And slide that beer down
Smoke that ciggy
Smoke it round and round

Arteries squeeze soft violins
And fog drops figs around my ears

I am free of the war walkers, red-faced from the VA hospital
The splayfooted hawkers, who look at me but don’t see,
The big lipped talkers selling God on a plastic spoon
The eye-socket caulkers pointing at the sky
Hand bones glowing from the sun

When his plumbing was clogged
Dad was ruinous
Worse than drunk
Removing heads with teeth
Boxing flowers with pillows
Spilling his intestines on the lawn

His Eyebrows would lift and fall
While his scalp chewed his hat
As He saw communists lurking under mini skirts
With smoldering block shaped heads
Middle aged bald and oily
Breathing with him
The red orange recklessness

Tea Kettles howl the alarm
Against the naked boiling smiles
That I regretted
They keep me up now
I see them shine at his rotted rugs
Lopped off and buried

The endless aluminum line
Measured the muck of his days
And when wine breaks my head
I see him under my eyes
Licking salt off my pores
Clinging with clean claws to heaving heaven’s gate
And then dropping like a swatted moth
Back to my early hours
To spasm in those five O’clock dreams.

Joshua Kight  4/15/04