Dear Children

Dear children

Your job is to keep me young

Please do everything possible to make it so

Keep snapchatting pictures of your new nail color and turning me on to new fandoms

Keep sharing 90s indie rock and facetiming with me

Above all

Keep humoring me

Even if I am forty years older than you

I like feeling cool even though I probably am not

It’s nice to appear hip to other moms

Who don’t have a clue about instagram

Or to become the Iphone maven to old flip phone users

I rather like it when my fellow 20-something tutors

Say I never to cease to amaze them when I share that

I’m done with neon pink hair extensions

So passé

So even when I am a really old lady

Grey and decrepit

To the degree that I am able

Please make sure to keep me young

Whatever that may look like

I don’t have a clue

I am not there yet but I will be

Inevitability steps in

Like it or not

And if my memory fails me

Please tell the world that you know I remain young in my heart and soul

And when I am gone

Please tell everyone how I stayed young because of you

©kcasady2014

Rumble

A rumble

Distant

Dropping from the sky

Echoing from its dark vault

Vague and pulsating

So subtle 

The hound barely heard it

But her ears pricked up

She craned her long neck

Trying to sense its source

A deep throated growl

Rolling out against the clouds

Kids count one one thousand

Two one thousand

Between the lightening and the thunder 

Laughing through dreadful storms

Making light of drenching rain

While imagining pending doom

Of a squadron of ancient propeller airplanes

Droning through thick choking air 

Bombardiers tightening grips

Squinting through their sights 

Releasing deadly hail upon their enemies

A welcome sight to cadaverous prisoners of war

Straining to see through dark swollen eyelids 

Allowing themselves a momentary sigh of relief

As the ground shakes beneath their cages

From the bowels of the earth 

As tectonic plates shift

Punching each other

Who will win this battle of magma and slag

Cloaking continents in a fresh crust

As buildings crumble upon shrieking bodies 

And the rumble

From somewhere 

Drifts back to nowhere 

And the hound goes back to sleep

©kcasady2014

Truth

Lies belay the truth

Replaces it with myth

That ripens into folklore

Truth adheres to nothing 

Heedlessly retreating 

Breaking into the tiniest of molecules

Floating noiselessly

Drifting further apart

Until time casts it out

And the universe replaces it with nothing

©kcasady2014

Money Speaks

Someone said her mother never wanted to get pregnant

Fear kept her from that state

The dread of child birth

The discomfort of carrying a baby

Or was it mental imbalance

As her father said

The early shock treatments she endured

Hoping to put her mind back together

Both perhaps

The imbalance causing an unfounded dread

Public agencies declaring her too irrational for approval

Resorting then to the secret world of private adoptions

Where no guidelines existed for proving worthiness

And only money spoke

©kcasady2014

Inamoratas

Dear sir

Really you must be stopped

Before you've run out of parts to play

The ones you like

Where you can be quirky

Showcase your physicality

Where intellect conspires with charm

And you use your enticing grin to fool and befuddle

Where the myth of you leaves your singular audience exhausted 

And your manfulness folds up and goes home

Really sir

You must be stopped

You leave behind a deep swath piled with unfinished inamoratas

©kcasady2014

Dark Corners

Please don’t channel your mother

She’s not wanted here

At her sister’s funeral

We didn’t like her

Dead or alive

Please don’t channel your mother

Her spirit taints all it touches

Brings us down

Clouds our eulogies

Shows us where we come up short

Please don’t channel your mother

She speaks truth

Says things we don’t want to hear

Her presence sheds light into our dark corners

Please don’t channel your mother

Don’t let her out

Tell her to stay quiet

We do not wish to abandon our lies

©kcasady2014

Hear Ye

Even I am relieved that the ordeal is over

That she finally died

The process so magnified that it spilled over everywhere

Young great grandchildren sang songs to her

Picnicking at her bedside

Adult grandchildren held vigil

Snuggling close

Freeing the even older adult children for a breather

All eulogized

Hear ye

Hear ye

We did all these things for her

Hear ye

Hear ye

She spent her last two weeks in a morphine induced coma

Freed from cancer pain

Perhaps freed from loving attention

My mother died in an ambulance with the attendant praying for her

She didn’t die alone

Jews are not supposed to die alone

My cousin said her newly dead mother had the best life of all her sisters

You might be right I say back

Your mother had all the trimmings

Adoring grandchildren and great grandchildren

A full life of estimable acts

My mother

A brilliant independent soul

Is buried alone 

Not near her husband or her parents

But serenely surrounded by other dead Jews

So she can kibitz without strings attached

Perfect I say to my cousin

Just perfect

©kcasady2014