The Drama with Pop’s Eyes

I want you to go with your pa to the
eye doctor,   bobby,     she tells me.          drive him
down about quarter of eleven so
he can get his eyes di-a-lated and
doc straus can look in there real good cuz he
said somethin’ last month about your pa’s eyes
comin’ apart   —   scalleria or somethin’  . . .
anyway, listen and tell me what he says.

the optometrist is curious to know
how  episcleritis  related to
allergies had become a threat to pa’s
ocular longevity   —   the right eye drops,
he says,     can fix that in a day or two;
cataracts is a threat,   but that’s long term.

David M Pitchford
21 March 2012

Within an Eight by Ten Room

dimly lit by diffuse light through window,
this room has become my cloister prison;
a river called internet runs through it
in the air and ever listening like angels
or perhaps demons, but my mind no longer
distinguishes between such mysterious
strangers, beings . . . more interested in
dogs passing by the window, one all but
blind with cataracts (this is mother’s bitch,
papa’s little darling), and another
the neighbor’s two doors down, a fine specimen
of boxer and constantly starved of good
attention.   .   .   .   and the closely distant sound
of mother shooing him is the scourge on my back.

David M Pitchford
3 Dec 2011

Yella Dove Tavern Verse 31

angela is due out of prison early
next february, so dave and lucy
are setting up a homecoming party
down a yella dove tavern.          of course mike
won’t be here, what with the accident and all
the hard feelings between everybody.
that night three years ago, though, it was mike
who bought the drinks and then bullied angela
into driving that night.     and it was he
refused his safety belt so he could flirt
with sandra over the seat—was his clumsy
elbow upside her head distracted her . . .
it was all a tragic confluence of bad
acts and lousy luck with consequences.

David M Pitchford
27 Nov 2011

Blogger Fanmail

please quit,     she wrote,     writing poems about
me;     it’s embarrassing and it pains me
seeing you humiliate yourself like
this.         and don’t bother to deny these are
verses referring to me.          used to be
they were somewhat charming in their way   .   .   .   but
now they just seem a bit pathetic   .   .   .   more
and worse than pathetic, really   —   your last
few have taken on the tenor of quiet
desperation bordering on obsession.
it’s past time you faced the truth of yourself:
you’re a failure, bad poet, and a hopeless
romantic living on unrequited
obsession and blown opportunity.

David M Pitchford
3 Nov 2011

War Stories #79

without cindy here day in and day out,
I don’t know     .      .     .      but without the program, I
sure as hell wouldn’t be around to share
these stories of courage without strength, these
forlorn tales of those caught under the bus,
run over in life’s sideway paths lost be-
tween the cracks     .     .     .      without this hope, without
wisdom shared and bullets bitten within
fellowship, how could I hope to arti-
culate these dramas faced and unfaced drunk
sober and drunk again, now sober to
remain, twelve steps out of hell and walking
hand-in-hand with the unlikely love of my life,
my once and forever partner, cindy.

David M Pitchford
27 Oct 2011            *final of this project to be posted

War Stories #47

maybe two weeks after donna’s funeral,
julie looked me up, dragged me from a meeting
to share some bad news. she had contracted
h.i.v. from somewhere, unsure whether
from a john or from a dirty needle.
either way, it was not to worry me,
as I had never shared her or her spikes.
but then she had to tell me that somehow
that gang from saint louis had gotten our
names and were on the hunt for all of us.
a banger I knew from meetings confirmed
this, and said I could buy my way free of it
for the right price . . . that’s what got me downstate,
and, by God, somehow it’s all for the good.

David M Pitchford
24 Oct 2011

War Stories #17

where in the world is our place? billy asked
me once. folks like us, the ones run over
by life and this curious world, where do
we fit in? I recall shoving a mescal
bottle at him and telling him to drink
from the teat of earthen kindness, just to
shut him up. nothing like deep water to
kill a good buzz. but then, sometimes questions
like that—under the right influence, or
perhaps the wrong—they pull you in like some
addiction centered in the mind itself,
that’s a drug you can’t buy on any street.
hasn’t stopped me looking at any rate,
always this search for island of misfits . . .

David M Pitchford
22 Oct 2011

Daddy’s Girl

after the night, his fractured voice in grey
whispers crawls along her memory, cold
and misty like october morning. she
shudders in the crisp breeze—forty-nine this
morning, cold front having passed over some
time in the night—sunny but breezy, jacket
no slicker. she hears his voice in the tattered
wind, in its choppy gusts feels his old angers

later, after the visitation, she
sits with friends over coffee drinks and speaks
of her father, the bright days of her youth
when he had been bigger than life. never
the truth of his despotism, his heavy
hands roaming her flesh . . . his scotch stinking breath.

David M Pitchford
20 Oct 2011