Merry Xmas Dad

Merry Xmas Dad

You might have lived to be a century
Smiling at balloons sucking candy
Stroking your yellow cats
Filled with patriotism and not even
Missing the holidays of your past
Not even knowing Christmas Eve
From the Day of the Dead
You struggle up the stairs to your bed
Are you preparing for your eternity
Fetal position how many hours each
Day curled up in oblivion
Your wife hates you resents
Your long life and if you know
Anything through the haze that is it
She accuses you of making a Hell
Of her disappointing life
Do you recall in your dementia
That we are estranged that not since
We played chess half a century ago
Has there been anything but false pleasantry
Between us no understanding
No communication no rapport 
Instead silly jokes over fish
We sat in a swing on Tybee beach
And compared biceps whatever summer
You ambled over the sand as your wife
Let the sea breeze give her a shining
Moment in the sun
What has our life meant to you
The failed law practice
The failed first marriage of twenty years
What women still emerge in the mist 
Of your mind what joys recalling
My brother and me wrestling with you
On hardwood floors
Dad I remember your beard
Like sandpaper when you held me as a child
How proud I once was of you
Standing in your officer's uniform
Taking my mother out
Swiveling in your Colonial office chair
Under a gold clock ticking away
Your life of pretense
Why don't I love you old man
Was it your dishonesty your politics
Your doting on your second wife
Whose dreams never came to be
Who came to find emptiness and burden 
In your existence no matter your devotion
Who grew disillusioned as I did
With who you pretended to be
Your dying days bring me sadness
Though you jerk from childish joy
To belligerence over a simple word
You are alien to me though you
Conjure images from my youth
Confused like driving a car for the
First time unable to make the machine
Go where I want that is how my feelings
For you are off the path
For something of you must be mine
At best I forgive you for the alienation
Were you clear of mind I'd ask yours
For me for my inattention and lack
Of concern for you for you are now
A man without love from anyone
Unwashed unfed frail skeleton of a man
Loved only if at all by my kind brother
Ever friend to the downtrodden
Farewell Dad this Xmas Eve
We shall not meet again mind to mind
This Lifetime