For my father, to Mr. Gin

Arithmetic resting on bones,
the image in the hungry mirror
ate through the glass,
the testy torrential environments,
the 6 cups of stale coffee.

Festering free from
breeding hierarchies
and self-loathing
mangled minds,
clucking cosmetics
winking to each other
at the downfall of man,
basking with teething rhetoric
and blinking lights,
the melting apothecaries
nod their hurting heads
to symphonies
played out in ancient opera houses
with crushed velvet cushions,
all around the singing globe.

My dads laugh boomed and
echoed through
my rainy head,
reminding me of yuletide angels,
happy endings and spicy foods,
frolics in the streams of my childhood,
lightning trees,
frost and grins,
bear hugs and safe hiding places
away from the cold concrete.
Then with an ache and a shudder
came ferocious visions of
enacted sorrowful holocausts
set to the tune of
blazing trumpets,
dying to be reborn
in ice and anthem,
we raise our
stinging lips
soaked with dire and
diverse tears
for the loved ones lost and dead
that we remember
with sad smiles,
eyes that open croaking windows
and rusted shut door frames
of limbo planes,
scary ether monsters
playing hopscotch
while sipping our blood
if we weren't paying attention
to the crusty crucifixes
hanging in the haunted hallways
of the machine age.
Yet,
We still choose to dance
in rapture eloquence
among the delicate details
between earth and heaven.