Stapled Dust

by The Poet Spiel

Lena double-baggies Delmar’s

last-poured bowl of Cheerios

stashed away untouched left dry

on the top shelf of the pantry

for god knows why.

His ruddy face had landed kerplop in them

as he had his final stroke.

She mixes them in with the bastard’s ashes

bone splinters teeth and all

staples the bag to the wooden cross

he’d set up in the backyard

to use for the days

when he couldn’t get to Mass.

She takes a rolling pin to the works

and treats the whole lot like thug booty

a trade for those lippy lavender lusts

he gurgled up and out of the promises

he’d made against her best advice

not to teach Christopher and Jeremy

that those righteous s.o.b.’s at the church

were “Father”— Delmar’s own dust right now

knowing gawddam good-and-well-enough

the reign of fucked-up Father Timothy

draining the sweet sap from his own pecker

(how many decades ago?)

(how many times had he bawled about it?)

and the frail old queen swishing around

sprinkling his incense cassock starched

like an old maid’s funeral attire

lying in wait for his sons

cause he remembered what a fat cock Delmar sported.

Run them scammers fresh out of proud

Lena shouts as she slams the bag once more

sending the ashes and Cheerio dust flying.

Fuck their chilly heart-raping souls

and now Delmar’s cross comes crashing down!

Bankrupt bastards are after your Oldsmobile

your precious Hummel collection

ten cents on every dollar

the risen cream on every pint of milk

and your twelve year-old’s pussy

Father? Father of what?

Pray? Prey with an E that’s what.

God’s mouth to a snake!

Her father was a Methodist

and she didn’t even call him Father.

Called him Pop if she called him anything

if and when he came home.

And she learned she could pray to something bigger

than herself when she white-elbowed her way

through two-tit cancer then

came out of it never calling anybody or anything Father

much less some Irish bastard who collects

innocent boys and rides their little fannies off

on low and mighty clouds.

Well Delmar was just as much to blame as

that fucking Timothy.

Same with all those Catholic Mommys and Daddys who

kowtow around making special cookies

publicly casting off big bucks spouting pucker lip tributes

instructing their vulnerable little ones

that those suck-up supplicants are sacred Fathers and

can be/should be trusted.

And if she can ever get her hands on the dust created

and stirred up by the Mommys and the Daddys

Kathy and Bob next door and the Dodds and the Flanders

the Doughertys and the Romanos

who misguide their kids just so plus all the

Fathers’ Timothy and Benjamin and Jonathan

and Paul and Peter who play out the charade

“Cheerio Goons” she cries she’s got plenty of

big black baggies and her rolling pin’s got

plenty of spunk left in it and if that’s not enough

there are cheapo cargo ships departing this

country every day desperate for slave labor in the galleys.

Maybe Rome will welcome them

*www.thepoetspiel.name