I slam the flowers,
petals scatter
like cockroaches with the switching on of a kitchen light.
I look at the freshly turned dirt,
a grub wriggles, sickens my stomach
I hate.
Six feet down is the bound body of my son
God has abandoned me
life is undone
Nine years old!!!
I look at the cool grey stone that marks his life
and I hate
The cold wind bites at the tops of my pink fleshed ears
I drift back....
Back to the last four days
*****************************************
Sunday night was spent on a van ride,
Levi, my son, along for company
Dropping off videos, the new Lion King one
The Jackal
Jerry Springer Too Hot for T.V. III
he asked me about my two, I lied, embarrassed.
I had skipped church that morning.
I let him toss the tapes into the night box
it makes him feel like a man
I'm not sure why
He complains that he is hungry
I tell him he doesn't know what hungry is.
Kids in Africa, a familiar parent routine
I have a craving for a can of Copenhagen
so I stop,
leaving him in the van
I grab a 50 cent stick of beef jerky
I hide my dirty habit in my coat pocket
I don't want him to question me about why
I'm killing myself, I don't have an answer
I'm weak
I'm half afraid the lesson he will learn will
cause him to grow to be an alcoholic, a drug addict
I'm a hypocrite
*****************************************
A light rain starts to fall at the cemetery
I am jarred back to the here and now
a sharp razor pain cuts my heart
"Levi, I ...I..."
The words do not come
I drop my head and vomit
I do not feel better.
*****************************************
Monday; I didn't see him, awake that is.
Gone by sun-up, home after nine
seemed a reasonable bedtime
for a fourth grader
I checked him out before I went to bed,
see if he's breathing, as my wife would say
By his fluorescent blacklight I see
He isn't wearing a shirt
I examine the four inch scar
from where he was shot with a BB gun last summer
still in his liver
poor little bastard
by his eye is another scar
bit by a dog at the age of five
he was pretending to eat Dog Chow
pissed the mut off
He has cellulite around his middle
My wife said she was concerned
not normal
I stare
I remember being nine and
my brother and cousin tormenting me,
"Damn your fat, what are those chunks?
That is so gross."
Levi's not fat, just a victim of defective DNA