Friday, March 11, 2011

2086. STAFFORDSHIRE CONFESSIONS

STAFFORDSHIRE CONFESSIONS
Celebrity rate sheets and corporate dog chews?
The hammerhead of cereals, the underwriter of
all these memorial things? Whenever I think
back on Grandma, all I see are steamed-up
windows from another Winter's night of
cooking tomorrow's food. Food. Food.
(All I ever heard about).
-
Fifty years back, I was an orphan, at the
ready in a stultified city orphanage, just
waiting to be farmed out. Grandma did come
to get me, and I got out - but oh all those
long days in her measly hovel on Avenue
this or that. I really don't remember much.
Next door, a basketball court and a parking lot,
even way back then, when I was ten. Then,
they came again and took me away.
-
I escaped on a dark, rainy night, and was never
heard from again. Grandma died in 1980. I did
attend, surreptitiously, her service at graveside.
One of my crazy cousins, I remember her raving
and fainting. No one recognized me. I came in a
rented military uniform and feigned a wicked
war-wound limp. It allowed me to stay in the
background, and no one really caught on.
-
That too was long ago. Then I found a family,
yes, but only to make it with their daughter.
It all lasted a while and then it too faded away.
My life, awkward, wasted, wicked and vile,
has pretty much always been like that,
pretty much been the same.

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