POEM: Something Good From This Awful Day

When I was a kid

I dreamed I killed myself

A kitchen knife against the throat

Nothing turned black

Everything turned blue

A loving shade

Welcoming me into the warmest nothingness 

And when I woke up I cried

Because I was still alive

Today, at your funeral, I learned that’s exactly what you tried first.

Slitting your own throat.

Just as I learned we were at the same Green Day concert back in ‘09

My dad your Godfather

Your name shared with my grandmother

More in common than I ever knew

Except when you woke up your blade was real

And weeping in a hospital bed

You soon remedied your tears

With your next, more successful, attempt

The priest asked us all to take away

Something good from this awful day

Reflect on you and think of a way

You’ve affected the person we are today

Ash to ash, dust to dust 

I read from John, Christ was the way

Then dropped dirt onto your grave

I watched the hollow faces of those who loved you left behind

And in their sorrow, my gift from you I then did find:

Gratitude that my great blue childhood hug was just a dream

And that I did not listen to that warm, seductive scene

That those who love me still have me driving home to them tonight

And that the only tears I shed now are tears for your lost life

POEM: Gothia Towers

En route to the city where my father died,

half watching Dylan, half listening to the Fall,

the plane too hot, 

the bus too bright.

But I was too paranoid to sleep; 

vigilant for the next stop.

Not expecting the name in lights

of the hotel where he died

across the street from a theme park.

Glass glittering its welcome into the night:

the boogeymen just a building,

unaware it was the symbol for so much pain.

As the bus, unconcerned, drove on

and I was moved beyond it, at last.