Kristen de Kline #56 - teenage boys

my house smells of teenage boys trails of grease
meander across the cooktop and granite benches where the boys
nab the blue and white flecked plates we used to
snort lines on and stack them up with bacon eggs
macaroni cheese too much salt

my son offers me a drag of his Bond Street Red
as if he's discovered something
     new wild wonderful
the black boxes they're lined up in
splash out
     body parts
spit out
     organs:
cancerous tongues
gangrene toes
a lung with emphysema
young toddler strapped up in a breathing mask
corpse like body of Byran Lee Curtis, who died aged 34,
he's a dead men talking but nobody's listening

my son turns off the flame but leaves on
the gas, unaware of all the famous female poets who used that method
to kill themselves, penning notes: I feel certain that I am going mad
again, I shan't recover this time, I can't fight any longer ...
my son thrashes out Stairway to Heaven as he washes the plates bubbles spill
like foaming lava in the sink, he drops
half a cigarette onto the outdoor sofa it simmers
slowly, almost politely,
rings of smoke through the trees burn a small hole in my heart
the size of a fifty cent coin

in the morning
     you find two nicks on your designer beer glasses
in the morning
     you can hear the forests still echoing with laughter

when you first walked out you would lie on the double bed in the shelter
     watching
random images projected across a white screen:
stray headlights pacing up the driveway
whispering winds
tall shadows
a dead man chasing you in dreams
a ring of smoke
     simmering
a small hole
     burning

when you first walked out
     you couldn't smell the gas
bacon & eggs teenage boys
     you couldn't hear the chords of Stairway to Heaven
the songbird who sings the voices of those who stood looking

in the morning
     the boys' laughter wraps you up, warmly comforting
reverberating downstairs to the burnt-out sofa where you lie
with a plunger of coffee and a sense
     that anything, living, anything
is possible
     in the morning