Into You Like A Train

He didn't make a sound  when he hit the dirty floor, 'cause there was no one there to hear him anymore. Under the kitchen table: cobwebs and balls of dust. There's that  antique jackknife,  That you thought you lost. And then your heart stopped. It was weary and broken. All the loved ones lost, The "I Love you”s  left unspoken. And the ones you cared about, have all passed away, The children you once played with, now live so far away. The sink is filled with dirty dishes, Moldy food in the ‘fridge. A grease spattered wall, Is this really all there is? The end of every month, Seven hundred in the red. No money for food or beer Is it any wonder that you're dead. I wouldn't view the body Something I couldn’t do. That's not the way  I wanted to remember you. A camo shirt and sweat  stained hat, Sitting at a park bench, Down at Fort Mott. Ashes in the water, pale clouds billo...

It’s about nine in the morning when she hears him clomping up the wooden steps and unto the back porch. “About time!”, she thinks to herself as she places the cup of Nescafe on the formica table top. She turns toward the shaky aluminum screen door just as he enters, carrying his silver lunch box in one hand, a brown-bagged six pack in the other. He responds to her bland “good morning” with one of his own as he walks over to the refrigerator. He sets his lunch box (with it’s hand painted iron cross and his work nick-name “Mad Dog”) on the top, pulls the six-pack noisily from the bag, and puts it in the fridge, while pulling a can loose from the plastic rings that hold it together. He pulls the tab off the Reading Beer tall-boy, and takes a long much needed draw as he pulls out the chair and sits across from his wife. “How was work?”, she asks, without interest. “It was alright”, he responds. He takes another long draw off the tall-boy, savoring the cold wetness and a...

As I plodded up the back steps, I could already smell it through the screen door. My stomach churned. I knew what I was going to have to eat for dinner. It was my Dad’s day off before switching shifts at work, and he was making one of his favorite meals. As I opened the door, a steamy blast of putridness, the smell of tripe, from the steam loudly hissing out from the pressure cooker rattling the regulator. For those of you who don’t know, tripe is the muscle wall of a cow’s stomach. Disgusting, right? Spaghetti with tripe in tomato sauce. I felt nauseous as I climbed the stairs to my room to do my homework, but instead read Isaac Asimov’s Science-Fiction Magazine. Finally, the call came, “’S’eat!”, my Dad yelled, thinking that a clever contraction. Crap! I had to eat what was put in front of me, whether I liked it or not. Even if it was disgusting. My Stepmother would tell me that plate would stay on the table until I finished it. Didn’t matter how long. Even if it got mol...