Day 11: Dot Goes Home

Dot Goes Home

You're dead, but I can still tie a mouse by its tail to a teacup.

Your daughter says she feels you, she is in ecstasy,

says this in earshot of your proper corpse.

Your stepson, who in the eighties ate his gun

doing fine, one eye in a permanent wink,

no sense of taste, wields his own Tabasco.

His estranged son bears no echo of rage on his face

from finding Daddy that way, tho I hear it was an effort

to get little Bobby to invite big Bobby to his wedding.

All the usual relations and revelations;

“She's going home,” “A Better Place”

Dressed in your Sunday best,

blood swapped with blue juice,

in your daughter's mind you're in a palace,

along with the brass saint 

nailed to a wood cross above your box;

who does not look at all well.

Your eldest's a study of implosion;

your grandson looks like he's

running for president.

It is all very pleasant, who am I to call it a myth;

it will be a Better Place than this

stuffy foyer of a renovated home;

motel paintings on the wall,

offensively inoffensive.

In your palace of dirt with your husband

and his first wife, a man whose greatest

courtesy to you was to die in his sixties,

giving you a few decades to play bingo,

take a lover, blow the renovation money

on a trip to Atlantic City.

Go home, now, in your airtight box,

mailed to your God like a letter.