Florida Kaddish

Florida
sunshine
fierce
as god
almighty People
were not meant
to live
in this drained
swamp state
but we live
on air conditioning
& hope
unreasoned here
streets clogged
with old slow driving
sluggish blood moving
through narrowed
veins My doctor says
my cholesterol is
high enough I should consider
religion
Genetic she says probably
one of my parents
had big cholesterol
too: father maybe,
Died eighty six
walking back from nursing
home breakfast
collapsing on gleaming
linoleum Derry New Hampshire
not twenty miles
from my home wife sons
I hadn't
known seen
him twenty years
maybe more
cremated him
(skinny undertaker
born again adam's
apple bobbing
like original sin
offered to pray
with me
over cardboard box
Later met his lover
slack haired woman lost
in mourning
not much older
than me could have
slept with her
maybe in other life Glad
someone loved old
bastard someone
sorry to see him
go Here Florida though
years later
other nursing
home where senile
wait for morphine angel
Mother once I emerged
from you now you are
erased & I say
perhaps Kaddish
just like Allen
Ginsburg only
you aren't dead
yet, are you, Ma
&your brain isn't crazy
only damaged and emptied
& home I brought
the old man's dust
from Affordable Cremation Services
throat bobbing Christian
body burner
to wait in cedar closet
basement all long winter
until ground thawed
enough to plant him
& now my mother
& all the garden of emptied
old get watered
twice a day
until they are plucked
& delivered &
Christ everything
is loss I said
Honey I'd like you
to meet my
dad as I carried him
boxed & roasted
into kitchen
& Kaddish
is for everyone
me & my cholesterol
even in Florida
this afternoon
beside my brain starved
mother & old man dead
at last & yes my soul
will magnify the lord
forever in his light
long & hopeless
burns eternal
Florida endless eye of god
Sunshine. Burnt Father
Emptied Mother
We all die
Eventually
In Florida.