Tropical Heat

 

Tropical Rain 40 x 50 cm acrylic/oil pastel on paper

ILIAD

Weirdness draped over the family tree.

All the way down to the roots is my guess.

The Confederate general sipping tea

in his frilly parlor, handing his sword through

the window to the Union commander waiting

for it on the front porch. I wouldn’t be surprised

if he was whistling Dixie. Buffing his nails on gray wool.

The second cousin who thought her poodle

could understand 342 English words. Paternal

grandmother who kept a ragamuffin pooch

bound and gagged beneath her escritoire. For like twelve years.

Her son who wept every time he heard a 1915 recording

of Caruso singing an aria from La Boheme. Frank O’ Hara

once wrote that pissing in the wind on a New York City fire

escape was the male equivalent of a good cry. But Frank

would never have taught me, as dad did, how to disable

a man with a solar plexus sucker punch so devastating

if it fails to destroy your opponent you had better run.

He cultivated his own garden, got high on part of its yield,

choking back the burning weed, reading “The Day Of The Jackal,”

dipping into the “Iliad,” while In the middle of his garage floor a heap

of birds poached from some farmer’s land in the bitter hour just after dawn.