Jolly Good Time of the Year

Its the fucking holiday season,
So what, who cares, who really gives a shit
Another year has come to pass and I am a bit older,  slightly heavier, I pray wiser and  I know a lot poorer

Santa doesn't exist and even if he did he wouldn't come down my chimney
I haven't been a good girl in years
There is hardness in my heart and bitterness on my tongue

I'm not sad, I just don't give a fuck
I want to, I do I do I do but cannot find a reason to
Jolly good time of the year

A Child's Dream

I was thinking of my childhood dreams and how they have not come to fruition

I sit and chat with him watching his memories fade as sun light fades silk

Slowly and surely time is robbing us both and, as in all nightmares I can't make it stop

It seems a dream, he's been blessed with old age, still tall dark and handsome even

The face shows a lifetime of living, of cigars and Jack Daniels

Hands that played cards long into the night and still tip the hat at a pretty face

An eye that can still appreciate beauty in a well tailored suit

And in the closet I found remnants of Sip and Dips and social clubs

He is blissfully unaware of the stealth of disease, the terrible price he's paying for this longevity 

It is I dreaming the worst of dreams as I watch him disappear in front of me 

Stand witness as he accepts with seeming indifference the gaps in his memory

I want to scream, he seems resigned, no matter-of-fact with the knowledge that he no longer remembers his wife and that she died and he grieved, the mother that strapped him on her back while she fished and killed snakes, the father who taught him to read late at night and made sure he went to school, the older sisters that feed him and gave him his first woman and the big brothers that give him his first drink, first ass whopping and his first knife

All gone from memory

My spirit stands up when he asks after his granddaughter only to be cut off at the knees when he not only doesn't recognize her face and shrugs his shoulders as if it's not the biggest thing in the world not to remember your grand baby

Why God why I ask, why take the memory of a man, a man that prided himself on running numbers and never writing them down, a man that knew exactly how much money he had in the bank every single day, a man that knew the backroads, whore houses, bootleggers and number spots in New Orleans, Orlando, NYC and Savannah,  a man who always knew where the fish were biting and how to get there

For him there will be no porch sitting and reminiscing

For me there will be no Daddy tell me again

My mother, her wisdom peppered with bitterness, salted and shamed, a woman scorned said God is too damn good to him, letting him forget all the bullshit he did! 

My childhood nightmares were of monsters in the dark, confronting the class bully, wearing homemade clothes and of Ma cleaning the ash off my face with spit

Now I dream horrible dreams of the day he won't recognize me

No smile when I walk in the door

No how's my baby doing today I'm so glad you came to see me

No I just love looking at my baby

Living waking nightmares of late night phone calls from police stations hours away saying we have your father in custody, we found him wandering and confused

I still dreams of a child

I want the stories of my birth and childhood told, told only the way a father can tell

How he felt when he first held his daughter

I am that child, I still have those dreams

I want my dreams to come true

I want always to be the child

The child of his dreams

House Cleaning

As I cleared out remnants of the past, long overdue but as the past can be, stubbornly holding on, not asking anything but weighing me down, I realized I don't need it, none of it

Some things will be carried forward but others I easily tossed away
Memories of love lost and foolish expenditures,  my how the time does fly
Things that at one time held so much meaning, things I thought would always be important
Now I wonder why, or as I often do,  remember thinking I don't want to decide so I just tucked them away

I expected warm, sad, poignant memories to flood me
But none came, it was mechanical, detached and quickly decided

I was pleased as I quickly tossed things aside, not a bit of hesitation
Proud I didn't feel the need to hoard, to hold on anymore