Thunder Sandwich #26 - Jason Kelly Richards poetry

GOING HOME

He watches the neighborhood sleep

from a hospital bed in his living room

as late-night television paints the wall

and his mind walks a thousand miles

down the road to the accident

and the blood transfusion required to keep his legs.

He still has legs

and an undetermined time

left to live in the town

where grandma and grandpa were married

and mom and dad were raised

and everyone knows everyone's business

and the rural support systems struggle

from lack of confidentiality

while ones with the condition

wait to die behind closed doors and drawn curtains

praying that the neighbors don't ask

and if they do the answer's

always something acceptable like cancer

He rarely moves from his bed

and if he does it's in a wheelchair

instead of his Tony Lamas

which stand silent in the hall

and occasionally he wrestles sleep from the sickness

dreams of high school

hanging out at the Tastee- Freeze

with his best girl or drinking beer

with his buddies at Moccasin Lake

in Charlie T's modified 67 Chevy

Tonight Coltrane's restless tenor

shades the obvious as he stares out the dirty windows

of his childhood home at winter empty streets

encased in silence beneath a swollen sky

and realizes that no matter how dark his days become

there's a light ahead.

CAROLINA BEACH 1967

I open my eyes and the windshield

Of our 59 New Yorker is a deep blue green.

I shove brother's head from my shoulder

And aim it toward little sister

Curled up in the corner

Of the back seat.

Mother hugs a beach towel and props her head

Against an armrest as her bare feet

Dangle out the driver's door.

Dad's sunk deep in a beach chair snoring

With an empty beer can balanced

Perfectly upon his exposed belly.

I dig for the remaining Fritos

From the bottom of a rolled up bag

Stuck between the seat and take a warm sip

Of Sprite from a can on the dashboard

Before I crawl out the back window

And run for the water.

As I stand on the edge of the ocean

In the early August morning

I do not know that in less than a year

My mother will refuse to answer the door

When the men in uniform appear on our front porch

To deliver the news of my oldest brother.

I do not know that twenty-two years of marriage

Can be dissolved by mixing sadness

And alcohol or that death separates

Those closest as often as it unites

Leaving emotions scattered

Like eggs on an Easter Sunday lawn.

I do not know that the inability to embrace

The inevitable will result in pugnacious showdowns

No one can win while faith

Is pondered daily and fingers pointed

In all directions as even the most

Sacred taboos are shoved into the open.

I do not know that mother will run into the night

With a strange man on the eve of my eighth grade year

And become a voice on the phone

For the rest of her life or that father

Will dive deeper into a bottle he knows well

Offering no excuse for the fall.

I do not know that at the age of forty

I will be the last of four brothers breathing

As I attempt to understand a world

I can't control by putting words on a blank page

In hope of defeating the demons that plays

Musical chairs inside my head

All I do know is that we have five days

Reserved at the Surf-Side Cottages

On BEAUTIFUL CAROLINA BEACH

And I should wake everyone

So we don't miss a minute

Of the time we have left.

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