a condensed history of my father's addiction
as a boy he spies God
at sixteen he crashes the crematorium
with a pack of friends
blankets buried in their bottles
buried in their pockets
he sleeps on the rain
grey ground as the dead
burn not many stones
away and the crows
suffer the smoke
at times the dead answer
otherwise he croaks to the old
banyan a wire wedding
bone and branch
trees prove God
after trees my hands
he wakes a cigarette
from embers
of a pyre
my hands mannequin
perfect knuckles churching
over fingers rivers drying
over palms a stage
for a book my future
children water
glass many eyeballs
with many dreams
the ghost of rain moon
wind self
always easier to drown
in others
joy birthdays shaved heads
simple gambles grief his mother
tongue weddings of cousins
a hundred generations removed
Holi colors fired into sky
sky unskinned with pain
pain brewing alcohol
alcohol burning the joy
then he married
our mother
he says I was not born
an addict she carved
one out of me
an era of rain he
a lotus stem all winter
noon 2 am
my sister's birth (or mine)
no cause to quit
bells strung around
our ankles so each foot
fall is a song as we burn
walking into memory
while he hastens from
barroom to barroom
the wolf drooling
in his gut
days drip over days
our eyes large
for our little faces
awaiting
his body
keeps a log of all these days
he withdraws
from everything
comedy specials
Pakistan vs India
the truce and tyranny
of evening news a light
stroll on the terrace fire
crackers on Diwali
polished shoes
silver coins
what remains
his remains
numbering forty he serves
no god serving a body serves instead
a sentence in the prison of his body
hummingbird BP orphaned memory
a vision that resembles voice
if all voice is a kind of weeping
his hands rap a snaredrum of air
against will against shame
at last an absence of rage
on road slows him
down
soon he glows in health ribcage
of brass a lamb in his gut milk
eyes tongue divorced of thirst
then
a kaleidoscope of relapses
today leaving
for his shop he stops
by a puddle to see
if he’s aged
moon in the water
so close that’s my son
again he thinks
every organ of god
his son or daughter
hurling a hook
and at the end
of the hook a burning
that swallows the moon
his face
an island
in the puddle a forest
of ripples around the eyes
teeth melting into neck
his house-of-mirrors silence
a history
history being a place where
place is lost
he spies
the same man
rowing a boat weighted
with the mantle of addiction
ashore he will sweep
all the years he has lived
into a small mountain
torch it
to warm his hands
