The Life

The Life                                                                                                March, 2013

“She’s divorcing me.” He said, referring to a wife who is now a stranger. Someone he still loves who no longer loved him.

That was all he had to say. His eyes were welling up with tears, for me, a stranger having to hear such a thing; and for the fact that I was there and he was there and him unable to pay for a room for the night. He was contrite and so was I; we were both hoping something could be worked out by the desk clerk, but no, it was not going to be.

I could see the story unfold. He showed me the email from a friend in Baltimore who said, “…see you have been floundering in jail in New Orleans.” And, “I’m praying for you!” So far his friend’s prayers have only gotten him as far as Mobile.

A group of his friends had come to New Orleans and gotten him out of jail, he told us. And what happened after that? I remember thinking.

Baltimore’s Ravens had won the Super Bowl. The party after that at the Super Dome was only the beginning. He never said it, but what I saw before me was a Super Bowl remnant caught up in the revelry of victory and Mardi gras. And that was it; he was lost in New Orleans and locked up for having too much fun. It did not matter, at that point, how many Ph.Ds. or how heads he had shrunk at Johns Hopkins. To NOPD you are just a case file, paper work, a part of the demographic.

“Maybe I’ll walk back to the bus station.” I remember he said as he walked away, out the front door, across the courtyard, on to Royal Street and into the only open bar in town. Not the place I was hoping he would go.

It was the only place that was not going to remind him of her. Not like the loneliness of the bus station inhabited by lost, transient souls trying to forget someone. He had to seek solace in the spirits he trusted. They, he believes, have become his only friend.

She had divorced me too; way back in 1989, and afterward, I was on the same road. A road I struggled along for a long while. A many years struggle that I survived when I decided I had had enough of the wallowing and self pity.

An Irish Twin Am I

I am an Irish twin.
I was born in January
my brother born in November
of the same year.
We grew up in bunk beds
fighting over top or bottom
and I can't remember who won.
We fought when we were board
with nothing better to do,
there was never any real violence
or hate, we were just boys being boys
and that's what boys do.

Now, Joe lives in Virginia
I live in the town where we were boys
and I miss him all the time
the years apart have made us closer,
but our bunk beds further apart.

WPCannon

January 20, 2012 at 1:24am

Mama

Betty Ann gave me books. She was my mother who loved to read. She had expressions about her that were literary, insightful & uncompromising. She stayed at home, took care of the house, raised her babies- her husband knew where to find her & and in between the cleaning and the preparation of meals, she read trashy romance novels that some how got her out of the house, away for the day and into the arms of erotic, romantic liaisons destined to become my mother's legacy to me- her love of books and the reading of their stories.

I used to write her letters from the navy days when I was away. I didn't know, until after she had died, I was told that she loved reading those letters so much that she would show them off all around town. She would send them to her sisters, brothers & read them to her friends and neighbors. She liked my writing and the story I'd tell about Tunis, Alexandria, Barcelona & Greece.

If she was still here, if the cigarettes had not killed her, she'd be my first reader. My mother, my muse, my legacy waits.

Muse on Sunday Morning

The problem

with silence

in doughnut shops

on Sunday

mornings

is that it never

lasts.

Too many arrive

for coffee

and sugar

to interrupt

my muse.

There is no poetry

in doughnuts

but just outside

live oaks draped

with Spanish moss

gray-green wisps

on a breeze

in my view

wave away

blue days

like sunshine

coffee

and doughnuts.

WPCannon

July 7, 2013

Havana, FL