To Find Starlight Dig In Mud

when he spoke words broke like glass between his teeth 14 minutes past 8PM 7 weeks after the red river in his brain ran almost dry he the acidic and sullen shadow of his youth turned to me (one side of his face a landslide of flesh frozen into freefall thus i won't mimic the inarticulate sound of it) look after your mother and my ten year old self nodding wishing i were not there then she who had married this man to protect her plus one boychild from a condemning Catholic family and a rabid priesthood having thus become a widow at 37 being only 5 feet high in her pumps also as slim as a whippet turned to drink dying quickly of a gastric ulcer never mind her failing liver no wonder i turned out more angular then an open razor biting every hand that fed body and mind thinking that same hand would one day turn against me as it usually did but i unable to stop my breakneck race to personal destruction until poetry found me wandering a bitter earth it entering my soul one turbulent night wailing like a hungry infant which i fed and carried for years not knowing i needed it much more than it needed me and so we ate broken glass together until words bled into red flowers floating upon a river that flowed through my brain