He Is Letting His Hair Grow
He is letting his hair grow.
The military patriarch
who never went to war.
He is letting his hair grow.
He who could have been a hippie
in the sixties, a flower child, a rebel,
married and had a family instead.
He is letting his hair grow.
He who ran his house with a stop watch
Whose dog was a doberman trained to the bone.
He who lined his children up for inspection
before they were to leave the house.
He is letting his hair grow.
He whose son did not fall far from the tree,
Rebelled in his own way
only to become as precise
as his father's stop watch.
He who was hit by a truck in the park
whose death only took a second
and whose body did not fall far from the tree
has a father who is letting his hair grow.
Why are you letting your hair grow, I asked.
"I am letting my hair grow until May 30th."
The anniversary of his son's death.
To accept what we can not control.
He is letting his hair grow.
Hangers
My father lost his poems in the insane asylum
somewhere between weaving polyester
into coat hangers and doses of lithium.
My father lost his poems,
somewhere between writing letters
to his wife
about his progression
and his hope on this new drug -
about getting better -
promises when he is,
things would be different.
My father lost his poems
and his life
somewhere in an October
somewhere in 1978.
I have his poems
hanging in my closet.
Tropical Itching
In May,
well hung mango trees
have fruit ready to come
inside a virgin mouth.
For the first taste of the season
always seems like the first time.
And flamboyans
skinny and quiet
as library mice
all winter long,
pouts on neon fuschia lipstick
Whores in heat no less
show off their branches.
Old ghosts
run down streets
escaping their grave.
The world is fornicating
and in Miami, May is the beginning
of hedonism and hell
as the sun burns the breast
of a topless pink girl.
