Poetic Referendum(s) On Life

Mr. Armless’s Disease

My little brother could not
wipe away my love of life
despite reporting my experimentations
that earned timeouts, punitive arrangements,
to spare his own bottom from the stick
with a fingers’ misdirects.

Anger I ingested, held
into manhood, when realization
I should be worried about him —
after drug use, failed marriages,
abandoned and shunned by his
woman daughter, having blown
his share of a family fortune.

I’m secure in my holdings.
Head up, even in life defeat, because
there is one worse off, needs, but
won’t reach out to me, Mr. Armless —
cut off after that great disease
called childhood. My heart
with widening chambers

ready to hold him within, yet
ache from emptiness.


4.28.24
22 lines, free verse

Created here/now in minutes…from informed experience not so dissimilar from PTSD of yore.
If anyone ever accepts me unconditionally as human, I’ll hold them as dear life.

Brother, not my friend, hated me, jealous, yet as the youngest, most freckled, adored.
I too, don’t have a relationship with his only offspring, a lovely young woman.

How flawed this human experience navigated?

P.S., if I spend two hours in one sitting here; that’s on you.