04-26-2016, 01:29 AM
A Restraining Order Couldn’t Keep Him
There was that scary night a giant SUV sped the wrong way
roaring alongside us several times, threatening menace.
You thought it looked like your dad’s,
but it couldn’t be and so we floored it.
Next day you heard the news,
your father had kicked in the door to his wife’s,
shot her with an antique pistol, then himself—
murder suicide.
When you dealt with his things
you found a cassette in Dad’s tape deck:
Jimmy Hendrix, worn out over Hey Joe,
“Where you gonna go with that gun in your hands.”
It was him that night on the road. You were freaking out
that he needed you and you didn’t stop;
I handed you a paper bag.
Chills took me because I knew enough;
he didn’t want to talk.
Then it was you cycling over and over,
weakening until the clog and tear,
then unraveled until there was no sorting you out.
Goodbye,
then me sleeping with a knife in my hand.
You wasted into indecipherable magnetic mylar,
like father like son,
some recordings can’t be changed;
sometimes things become garbage.
There was that scary night a giant SUV sped the wrong way
roaring alongside us several times, threatening menace.
You thought it looked like your dad’s,
but it couldn’t be and so we floored it.
Next day you heard the news,
your father had kicked in the door to his wife’s,
shot her with an antique pistol, then himself—
murder suicide.
When you dealt with his things
you found a cassette in Dad’s tape deck:
Jimmy Hendrix, worn out over Hey Joe,
“Where you gonna go with that gun in your hands.”
It was him that night on the road. You were freaking out
that he needed you and you didn’t stop;
I handed you a paper bag.
Chills took me because I knew enough;
he didn’t want to talk.
Then it was you cycling over and over,
weakening until the clog and tear,
then unraveled until there was no sorting you out.
Goodbye,
then me sleeping with a knife in my hand.
You wasted into indecipherable magnetic mylar,
like father like son,
some recordings can’t be changed;
sometimes things become garbage.
"Write while the heat is in you...The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with." --Henry David Thoreau