The Radio Poems

My father loathed the Kennedys,
also Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson,
Hubert Humphrey & George McGovern.
He hated triplets in rock & roll,
the incessant, self-sustaining beat
drove him mad, it never ended.
Triplets spread like an infection
from song to song. He woke
to triplets tapping on his window,
heard them in expansion joints
as he drove to work. Hammers
pounded them, radiators
clanked in counts of three.

My father changed as he aged,
became more conservative,
told me Nixon was too liberal.
He listened to zither music
& Hungarian marches.
After his divorce from my mom,
he married a widow of some means
who shared his great passion
for the cannon he had constructed,
a Revolutionary War replica.
When he finally turned the gun on himself
his heart flew over fifty yards,
a new world record.
He left a farewell note
condemning every doo wop group
with the name of a bird.

The Masons performed at his wake,
a bagpiper whined over his grave,
& my ex-brother-in-law eulogized,
"This was a man who despised
a job left half-done."

# posted by Bob : 11:45 PM