05-20-2014, 02:47 AM
Cocktail
One thing Tucker really liked to do as a kid was to watch Elvira,
Mistress of the Dark; killer tomatoes, killer bees,
that fare.
When he got older, the second girl he tried to meet
had long dark hair, pale skin
and wore dark clothes.
She didn't like it if people called her Elvira;
but she did like to tell people she liked Morticia Addams.
Not even when Tucker tried to get it into her favor
by singing her that song by the The Oak Ridge Boys would she allow herself
to like it.
Or that he wanted her to like the Elvira too.
Instead,
she wanted to have another boyfriend,
one that actually respected her Morticia Addams fan-page,
that she created, added pictures to, then never went back on,
after she told him to join it.
He joined it.
Tucker wanted to join it, but, his family not having a computer then . . .
and stuff.
They could never see eye to eye.
Besides,
she had a disease that she got from her ex-boyfriend that she didn't even know about.
That was fine and all. Tucker had a disease too;
and there weren't enough people around that could appreciate him
for what he was.
He was 25 at the time, anyway. And things like that happen
in small towns.
Oxygen
Now Tucker had done many things in many places and in the woods
by the time he was 31.
The backroads north of his house, his family house too,
south of that, east, west too over toward Martinsville,
south down in North Carolina, Milton,
them old stores, restaurants, that old Milton graveyard
people want to go to to really feel the memory of the dead
even when the dead they remember aren't buried there;
anybody can celebrate anybody in that place
with the older dead the more authentic and sentimental
for all.
Measly,
in the aftermath of not her death, but her scarred beauty,
Tucker mourned his sister, Desiree, how she was daddy's stepdaughter
from an older marriage.
Nobody in the family was blood with Desiree.
Her formal beauty haunted Tucker in bed at night;
at 25 he believed maybe he loved her in more than a brother way.
He felt it only the natural way of loving a sister not of blood;
and he regretted her blossoming beauty never reaching its bloom.
Scarred ugly, beautiful Desiree; only a brother not of blood
had had the swelling of what might have been.
Tucker'd been all over the place, considering.
Not many had even been by plane to anywhere,
where he'd been
out to almost California; nobody knowing anything else.
Why you'd go out west and not to California where the tv shows.
But Tucker, he didn't go there.
But back to Desiree, the youngest
from an older marriage of daddy:
Yeah, yeah. An older marriage; yeah.
Somehow things make sense if a family is to be a family.
Tucker didn't know what to think, sometimes, with family,
all it is is to feel. Tucker felt like he needed to be away.
And more than once he went all over.
"He went all over" is what daddy said,
and mama had to agree.
Tucker went all over.
One thing Tucker really liked to do as a kid was to watch Elvira,
Mistress of the Dark; killer tomatoes, killer bees,
that fare.
When he got older, the second girl he tried to meet
had long dark hair, pale skin
and wore dark clothes.
She didn't like it if people called her Elvira;
but she did like to tell people she liked Morticia Addams.
Not even when Tucker tried to get it into her favor
by singing her that song by the The Oak Ridge Boys would she allow herself
to like it.
Or that he wanted her to like the Elvira too.
Instead,
she wanted to have another boyfriend,
one that actually respected her Morticia Addams fan-page,
that she created, added pictures to, then never went back on,
after she told him to join it.
He joined it.
Tucker wanted to join it, but, his family not having a computer then . . .
and stuff.
They could never see eye to eye.
Besides,
she had a disease that she got from her ex-boyfriend that she didn't even know about.
That was fine and all. Tucker had a disease too;
and there weren't enough people around that could appreciate him
for what he was.
He was 25 at the time, anyway. And things like that happen
in small towns.
Oxygen
Now Tucker had done many things in many places and in the woods
by the time he was 31.
The backroads north of his house, his family house too,
south of that, east, west too over toward Martinsville,
south down in North Carolina, Milton,
them old stores, restaurants, that old Milton graveyard
people want to go to to really feel the memory of the dead
even when the dead they remember aren't buried there;
anybody can celebrate anybody in that place
with the older dead the more authentic and sentimental
for all.
Measly,
in the aftermath of not her death, but her scarred beauty,
Tucker mourned his sister, Desiree, how she was daddy's stepdaughter
from an older marriage.
Nobody in the family was blood with Desiree.
Her formal beauty haunted Tucker in bed at night;
at 25 he believed maybe he loved her in more than a brother way.
He felt it only the natural way of loving a sister not of blood;
and he regretted her blossoming beauty never reaching its bloom.
Scarred ugly, beautiful Desiree; only a brother not of blood
had had the swelling of what might have been.
Tucker'd been all over the place, considering.
Not many had even been by plane to anywhere,
where he'd been
out to almost California; nobody knowing anything else.
Why you'd go out west and not to California where the tv shows.
But Tucker, he didn't go there.
But back to Desiree, the youngest
from an older marriage of daddy:
Yeah, yeah. An older marriage; yeah.
Somehow things make sense if a family is to be a family.
Tucker didn't know what to think, sometimes, with family,
all it is is to feel. Tucker felt like he needed to be away.
And more than once he went all over.
"He went all over" is what daddy said,
and mama had to agree.
Tucker went all over.
