When My Grandfather was dying

[R.C. KITCHENS]

I apologize for the length Maybe this is the wrong place to post this. Please don't be afraid to tell me if its crap...

When My Grandfather was dying:

I saw my Father’s father weeks before
He died.

I'd say grandfather. "Fathers father seems like something someone not close to there grandfather would say. It seems further into the poem that your sitting with him throwing bread at the ducks.

We sat and fed the ducks in sweet
and thickly coated Florida heat.

this seems wordy, I dont know if there is another way to epress the heat better. Your already referencing Florida along with the other elements of "sweet and thickly heat".

We broke white bread
Into crumbs and fed the birds we knew would
Always come when bread was tossed around
The pond.

[b]I believe here you could word it better so it reads more precisely and without the hill and hill it takes to get it across.

No one spoke of death but we all
Could figure out that Death was in his hollowed
gaunt and livered cheeks, and Later that day we took
turns wheeling him around a hospital
where light reflections would shine on fresh-
ly mopped floors and Ammonia would smother
air, and moaning Skeletons would creak through halls.

I see three "and's" in this above, wondering if you could minimize them as they stand out.

In his room some pictures sat,
Against a window barely letting light
through blinds that blocked scenes outside.

I think theres some over emphasis with the blinds. I think just mentioning them gives the reader the perception that the view is blocked from the window.

I saw my infant body shown among other memories
Younger versions captured, joining him when
Others could not stand and comfort this dying man.
I wonder whether he saw these pictures or if he
Could watch the television my father brought
Into his father’s room. I wonder whether Giants
Games would still make him yell in excited haste.
As Dodger games still rouse my father’s haste.
Or maybe television screens were static scrambles
That couldn’t be followed but blared out as garbled noises and lights
In distant worldly backgrounds as he tried to slip into sleep and leave the world.
We heard the recordings his wife played of him screaming
“Kill me! Kill me!,”
His guilt or pain seemed hyperbolic and my brother and I almost laughed
We could not fathom what he’d seen or felt.


His wife came every day with grins and hiding tears
In life He had left her once, running off with a cashier from a local drugstore.
Inside her house were crosses along with Ronald Regan commemorative plates.
She believed in God Devoutly, Often retreating into T.V. Ministries.
A cab driver who drove her everyday became a frequent topic of conversation.
And she would often forget she mentioned him and repeat herself. How she smiled I couldn’t say for sure. I am not even certain what she felt.

When Visiting him with her.
We checked him out to drive and drove around a lake.

I get the feeling that your not close to your grandmother or have purposely referred to her in an emotional detachment. I also think you could say" we checked him out "the place" and drove around the lake"

He stared out windows quietly and only spoke once
Erupting angrily at his wife who tried blithely talking away the truth that she had not yet accepted.
He must have watched her while she watched him die.
He must have seen a burden weighing down on her as she pushed along his wheel chair and could not tell the feeling of painful buried love that surfaced as ire bursting and spitting
as dying embers that licked and jumped from fire to attempt to burn away
Her tolerance to pain she suffered on behalf of him
Life must have burdened him too, stinging him as nettles sting
As burring guilt for living out a slow and drawn out death.



The old man used to visit us in California
He’d rise early, pick grapefruits, slice them down
The center and sugar them, caking pinkish pulp
In white powder. Only he ate the fruits,
Other times they’d sit and moisten, turning
Brown and filling with rot until they’d fall in mud
That never dried. Now unpicked Grapefruits hang.
I think of wasting life of ripened fruit that should be picked
But hangs on rotting, weighing down branches and losing color.

I see several capitalizations from line to line that doesn't fit.

I wonder how my father grieved
When they wrapped his father’s ashes in a flag.

believe grandfather is more suited.

Did he Salute or cry, or stand as stolid as his father would have done.
I barely knew my father’s father when he stared into death and I couldn’t comprehend
Just what was happening.

Now i see you barely knew your grandfather. which might make up for referencing him as your fathers father. It just seems more drawing as "grandfather"

Now that I’ve lived and felt snares of illness and watched age
long enough to see time disappear and felt fading life I feel I have wasted.

I think you need a comma in here for it to make sense, the above part doenst really read right.

His sullen dying temper seems more tangible. I wonder how he felt knowing life at its end? Did he wish to relive a past? Perhaps I’ll see my father dropping bread crumbs for ducks and begging for death, and perhaps I’ll do the same.

I like the poem, feel like with a few rereads and an edit that it will flow smoother and read well.[/b]