Releasing Daddy-O by Opalina Salas
we shook your tambourine,
rattled your lonely maraca
and beat your bongos, daddy,
we sniffed your books,
graded your LP’s
and set the needle down gently

the kids blew bubbles and crushed junebugs
under flip flop feet
tremendous sultry night
under left over chistmas lights
on termite boards

my living room smells like cardboard and
intelligence, and someone wants
ice cream.
its too hot so
we start drinking beers
and start wishing the kids would sleep
so we could roll fat joints
and talk about you s’more

and then we read some buke
and then we read some mao
and then we played vivaldi
and the room was humming with you
i recalled our first dinner
our first quarrel
and the night i took the dagger
from your heart
in the car
and breathed life into your world
weary soul

we find poems
written in haste fast ink pen
such fastness
such madness
as if you knew
your life came quick
and had to escape into the spiral bound
confessionals
to be read later
like this.

ok.
i’m going to tell you now
that i’m ok.
and you shouldn’t come back in dreams
speaking spanish
laying coy
on the back fenders of my
dream blue corvair
with white tucked upholstered seats
40 years younger
speaking tongues
like the border
with communist handbook
in your weathered dungerees

and you shouldn’t ring my phone all day
waking me from my lover’s arms
walking half dead to the receiver
you’ve already left

but most of all

you shouldn’t worry
about anything anymore

sleep the milk white river
you knew you’d come to taste
so soon.
backstroke under the glimmering
stars
send fireworks and rubies in the raindrops
you send me
and I promise
daddyo
I’ll remember you

forever.

for Richard