These days only storms; this or deceptively blue skies.

The weather stings either way – bitter cold, the bone still burns.

A ring around the poesie, ashes, ashes, dust, dust, dust.

I have walked your azalea path one too many times

Not once did I see any real flower – only a few broken plastic petals -

somehow appropriate those like a flim-flam father’s love.

Did you kick his flat stone when you visited?

Did you kneel and cry?

Or did you try to jerk the tears that just would not come?

Me, I took the shot - black and white, all shades of grey.

I kicked the stone anyway for good measure.

What was it you missed?

Something you never had – Daddy hit and miss?

He always was a stern old bastard – the Nazi to your Jew,

leaving his boot-print on your poems, indelible and muddy.

He made his mark, didn’t he?

You wore the scars forever.

Your almost death beneath the porch –

I know: I’ve carried that torch.

Those scars: see how visible they are!

People see, but do not see.

And if they asked – anyway,

what would you or I say?

An almost suicide is hardly glamorous, no matter how serious.

It says, You failed. You fucked up.

Perhaps you didn’t mean it after all.

You meant business tho, didn’t you.

Pure chance you lived only to die.

Circumstance is dark.

But hey! The big rescue.

Do you thank or resent? They always do mean well.

A savior saving the martyr. You never asked for either.

Only peace: some sanctuary, shelter.

I have been to this place – now living where you lived.

Everyday I see that same sky, same tree.

The waves still slap-clap, breach the high sea-wall.

The ocean a pewter grey, it hits hard, a red slap to the face.

There is no comfort here, only ice-cold isolation.

Wrapped like a mummy, layers thick, you live wrapped in gauze.

Nobody gets in. You’d never let them. Not this time. Not again.

The hurt too deep. Hell, the scars bear this out.

You run your finger over the now-smoothed ridge..

Wonder about the all of it. Try to find the meaning.

It means nothing.

Perhaps this the worst part of all.