Napalm



He died about two years ago now,
A raging alcoholic that died as a result of an upper GI bleed,
As a result of chronic alcoholism,
As a result of his prior death in Vietnam.

Wilting clefts speak in tones of sob and fleet,
Stagger men sink back to mottle streams,
      Disintegration plots,
Drowned by beasts of mist cringe existence,
                 Liar kites windbound,
                  Spiral down,
Empathy reduction,
Atrophy induction.

Upper GI Bleed;
3% mortality rate,
I learned that as I googled his death certificate,
Trying to find what I could have done to fix it,
Hoping there was nothing,
I was disappointed by the answer.
 
Each pulse becomes treason,
Pumping towards slow drip tragedy,
            Drowning 'bluebird,'
Drip      drop       fade,
    
Vietnam;
100% mortality rate,
I learned that in Irish pubs in the Bronx,
Trying to find out if they could have done something to fix it,
Hoping there was nothing,
I was disappointed by the answer.
 
War role cast in yellow man fox holes,
Machine crumble march in devil trench,
Mortar binge and purge and stomp and drop,
Shrapnel evermore,
Faith thwarted, 
                By napalm reality.
 
His shell made it back stateside long enough to give me a last name,
I wonder now if escaping the potato famine was a good trade for the draft,
He was drafted on St. Patty's Day,
Luck of the Irish I guess.
 
Swarms be thick when prison bars are ribs,
        And the shackled,  
               Pumps,
Down in the shiver, Next to hate and history,
Hooks in the temples,
           of the martyr drone enlisted,
Entrapped, disemboweled, sent back to scramble amongst warless eyes,
              With more war,
                                And less I.
 

I found him dead and naked outside his bathroom,
I could see where he fell against the wall and slid down to the sitting position,
He had been sliding down for a long time,
Since St. Patty's Day, 1967.
 
Disheveled patriarch soaked in drop dead air,
Phlegm spit against a tyrant's breeze,
Long gone causes,
               They disrobe and wait to be counted,
Each throbbing in a lusty, salivary want,
            For it's death credit,
Picking over a dead man's heart, 
Each with a trophy grip,
                On the part it killed.
Regret, pain, loss, ambivalence, melancholy,
All lined up, 
            sneering.
 
I wonder if he apologized to me as he slid down,
Before he faded,
For dying like that,
Knowing I'd be the one to find him, 
Knowing I'd be the one to clean up his mess.
 
Rant child feather wall,
Sleek in the matters of me and me,
             Carcass shutter light,
   Looking for apology,
In a last breath,
                              I was a fool.

I own the apartment he lived in,
I had to get it rent ready,
I had to paint over the mural he painted on the cinder block wall in his bedroom,
I cried like a baby.

Erasing slays the swells of regression,
Crippled chaos named,
        Prayers be something less then this,
Less then painting,
Over painting,
Erasing you away.
 
I found poems,
On napkins,
I found black mold in the sink,
The poems were unfinished,
The mold was thriving,
That is what surrender,
Looks like.

Dan Kellett was born in the Bronx, New York. His creative endeavors have been in the realm of song writing for most of his adult life. He has written about 70 complete songs and recorded 30 or so. Dan started writing poetry about 2 years ago and has found poetry to be liberating, an escape from necessary rhyme and suffocating structure, a voyage of pure discovery and joy.