| Grizzie's Poetry Corner |
| THANK YOU DADDY FOR GOING ON THE WAGON You think I was too young to remember: Buzz, buzz - two to get in the Eagles' Club. Your life and ours. You would hand me a dollar on your way to the bar. 8 plays - a buck $.50 for beer $.25 a coke I danced in darkness Content to be alone "Daddy's Dancing Angel". Jukebox so far from the dance floor. I also spent time sitting if you forgot that dollar, which was often. Sitting, staring at the presidents' pictures past and present. Yours the most current; JACK O----- 1977 till ____. I tried all four of those wing-backs, sometimes fought for them with Greg, Robbie, Missy, and Amy. Kids who should have been outside playing at the beach. Kids who wanted to be at the beach. "Let's play hide and seek! "Everywhere but the bathrooms." "Yeah, Robbie, bathrooms're off limits!" Millions of hiding places. 500 chairs on two floors, barstools, offices, two bandstands, storage rooms. Anywhere to hide, except bathrooms and the kitchen (off limits by adult choice). When you were too poor or too drunk to keep up the rounds, you'd stagger in. The lounge, "the kids' lounge", was usually empty. We'd return to base--and you--dozing in your chair and your anger. You�ve never realized, Your devotion of MY life to the Eagles' Club made me afraid. Afraid like you to face worlds of family, job, education. But you also made me scared. Terrified of the demon that possessed you, our whole family for the first ten years of my life. Now that you�re sober, I can only say thanks. |
| DADDY KNOWS BEST as a child, i remember daddy's drinking. it wasn't anything big, just something to deal with. he came home drunk drunk as a skunk my brother, eggy, used to say one night, daddy came in tripping up the stairs toward the bedroom, Momma found him the next morning dead at the bottom of the stairway. now, as i stagger down the sidewalk i see daddy stumbling toward me staggering. i walk past the bar, hoping to get by it without going in. twp steps past the door i stop in may tracks, dead. daddy beckons there "Come have a drink with me, Stosh," he slurs. "It won't hurt to have just one." i smile and remember, Momma always told me "Daddy knows best." |
| WILLIE'S HAND In the days on Princeton Road My neighborhood was haunted. Willie the Dumpman Ambled down Golden Acres, His voice- biting as an old hand saw- Calling to us, "Come, come, see my handless wrist." In the days of Bunyan and the Blue Ox, Willie, it was said, ran the dump. Like all men, he also worked in the mill. Willie's hand got caught in A splitter-saw and rode down The Big Manistee with all The two-man sawed trees. I met Willie in my dreams one night. He beckoned with his brown-blood dried wrist. His lumberjack flannels hanging like Over-soaked leaves. Willie never hurt anyone. Just scared us. A little. |
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