Defrosting My Father

He felt spongy
and slimy inside,
every time we cut him open
to examine another cross-section.

the problem it appears
was that he had already
started rotting
at 13.

So by 20,
half the world’s noise
had stopped reaching him.

A gambler hitting 21is
cottage cheese in the sun.

Later he grew a mustache
to cover teeth
yellowed by the escaping gas,
produced by internal parasites
of the kind that
really don’t know a thing about
Video poker machines
or
the way an old woman sobs
when she slips and falls,
smearing her silhouette;
profile staining the pavement.

We drowned him in formaldehyde
to prevent the process
from spreading to us
but
it
didn’t help.

He was already hollow
with nothing left for us to digest
but this feeling that the
"standard government pension"
wasn’t the only thing
he owed my mother.
Maybe that life owed him more
than a 54 year old ride
on a beast
he grew himself from a sea monkey kit.
Getting off at any destination
that smelled like vice
to rest his hands
when the knuckles swelled and cracked
unable to close
around mine.

Since his will never brown
and decay
please don’t sew them shut,
he never turned away from an accident
and I think he’d want to see
these handfuls of scattered earth that
I’m to cast down
weeping darkness
onto his grave.
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i'm scared so often that i'm simply a product of both parents. i keep waiting for an incomprehensible vice to destroy my life. i think it might be love, but i will never understand that either.