Two new poems

A Story

He had been a smoker since fourteen,
And now, at fifty, his health was failing.
Spots littered all over his lungs.

Nonetheless, he knew the hell out of cars.
Just give him make, model, and year.

You could call him a grease monkey.
When he was fourteen, there he was,
Say, in the moonlight, grit-stained face,
Underneath a car stealing a carburetor.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there,
But stay tuned,
Because it comes into play later on.

He had one thing going for him: a daughter.
His pride and joy.
In all respects, she was beautiful.
Long brown hair, oval face, turquoise eyes.

Anyway, that’s off point.
Let’s stick to the script.
Let’s just say she was kind-eyed,
And married to a computer man.
Kind of nerdy, glasses, fidgety.
The two had a daughter of their own.
You see, that makes him a grandfather.

One afternoon, he was filling up,
And there was the computer man with a whore
At the gas station. What luck!
Well, maybe she wasn’t a whore,
But she was a woman
With another woman’s husband, let’s say.

Turns out, he tells his daughter
About the whore,
But she doesn’t believe it, can’t comprehend it,
Or doesn’t want to.

So,
And for lack of a climax,
He smashes computer man’s leg in
With a tire iron.
What irony, right?
Hey, what play on words: iron, irony.
But, I don’t have to spell things out, anyway.

So long ago
All this was before
The spots on his lungs showed.
Before he grew too thin,
And before his daughter disowned him.

She was his whole life, his daughter,
And he loved her enough to fill up an entire room.



Calm After the Storm

Washing underwear
In the motel room’s sink
With shampoo and a bar of soap.
The drain is stopped, and the water a light brown.
I’m alone, as usual, in my motel room.
On the table, an overturned book.
Waves of smoke leave the ashtray.
The microwave is chained to the refrigerator,
But what is the refrigerator chained to?
Chain or no chain, I can’t complain.
For this is all of my own doing,
Plus, just today, won fifty dollars on a scratch off
To rent out the room for the night.

My underwear floats, then submerges,
In the sink.
All is quiet, for a moment.
The shower beats against the wall,
And heat escapes under the door.
There's the hum from air leaving the furnace,
And the slow rumble of cars passing on the highway.
This is the calm after the storm.