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Pink Font

And I tell her
Write to me in feminine fonts
That flower and bloom and
Twist in flowing script
And curve in colored pale pastels
That calls to mind
A fullness of Lips and the hint of hues
That form crescents of flushness
Around her cheeks

And I tell her
Talk to me only with a tint of pink words
Whispered on the ether of each exhale
And floating weightless
On the warm vapor of each breath
For I am helpless and entranced
Possessed and driven by each letter
And word and phrase and line

And I tell her
Take these hands and move them
To capture each word that falls
From her mouth and is the
The slow ripened fruit
Of many idle hours
And graces my writing table
In lushness like a still life
With peaches and oranges



Incantation

She looks at me and says that I am the ghost of my father
Sitting on her sofa or sleeping on her love seat
And I agree an tell her that his death is simply a ruse
To avoid work and shirk obligations
I believe he still lives
Hiding in fugitive fashion
Like some old Nazi who escaped justice
Somewhere in South America

At the dinner table she calls me by his name
The incarnation of his waywardness
Whenever displeasure is expressed or faults counted
Whenever work goes undone and money is squandered
When promises are broken and bills unpaid
My father lives again

It is all his fault his spirit his failures his disappoints
That haunts this home and those who dwell here
For he has died and left the TV on
Some annoying remnant of him
As if the aftershock of his life here remains
And it is only the words repeated three times as you spin
Around and round
Fast and faster with arms extended

That can exorcise this house
And cleanse it of all his vices
The smell of cigarettes mixed with the muskiness
Of yesterdays clothes and somehow
Silence the sound of his snores
As he naps in the sunlight on summer afternoons
In childish invocation you must say as you twirl
With centrifugal speed in the center of the living room
And repeat after me the tragic incantation
That will force out his ghost

I love your snores
I love your farts
I love your gone