Scrap metal artist: John Lopez
Chest of steel
Eyes of fire
Telling me he knows his power
He is strong
He is bold
His days are long
His days are old
Steadfast he plows
In the heat, in cold, even in thunder shower
Just trying to make a buck….
In smoke filled rooms
The numbers are called
Giving rise to a nightly star
Success is sweet
A life is complete
As a shout of BINGO
Is heard around the room
So much you have seen
So much you know
Such wit, so clever, so keen
Such a noble lad
Went to war
To save us all
Came back a dad
A legacy began…
The children do not know
The pain your heart has felt
The misery your eyes have seen
They look
They stare
They gaze
Into eyes of blue
And see your
Smiling face
The love you showed
Is what I know
The devil in your chin
The shows on TV
Wild Kingdom and Disney
Every Sunday night
Sleeping in your den
On the couch beneath
A picture on the wall
Of a ship at stormy sea
Yes, seas in life are stormy
We ride them like the tides
Sometimes we sink
Sometimes we swim
Sometimes we just tread water
And do enough to stay afloat
Sometimes we drown
Tears to drown the sorrow
Of what is and what is not
I’ll always remember the Serenity Prayer
To accept the things I cannot change
Sometimes it pulls me up
Even though it’s sometimes hard
Hard it is to let go
I don’t want to and I won’t
My memories are alive
I wish I knew you better,
like how you grew up,
and what you did
I know there’s a pain there,
but I’m sure there is good too
I wish you could tell me stories
I wish I could sit on your lap
and hear your tales
I remember you
huffing and puffing
like the big bad wolf…
I remember
pushing the gas pedal
as you drove me to school…
I use to love
to clean your desk
Boy, I sure hope I wasn’t a pest
I now realize you were
having to watch me.
Well you did watch over me,
and I am proud
Do you remember
the white rails
next to your old shop?
I’ll never forget
balancing on top of them
You let me do it
and it made me feel brave
I remember
Walking to T.J.’s
Stepping on the black
concrete diamonds
on the sidewalk
I think they’ve changed
them downtown now
Playing little mind and street games
Like step on a crack,
Break your mother’s back…
Buying a pack of Salem
A pack of Pall Mall
And one Popsicle please
I’ll remember playing on your boat
Couldn’t wait to get it in the water
Hanging out down
At Brown’s Marina
I’ll tell my grandchildren
How I did not walk home
from the bus stop
After school
and I walked to the marina
To show a friend
my Poppie’s boat
And how I dropped my books
in the water
And how I had to explain
my wet stockings
to my mom
The moral will be
to them is
To go straight home
after school
I will tell them
how my Poppie
Taught me to drive…
I will tell them that my Poppie
Would get me anything
I wanted
Like a bobcat
or a motorcycle,
But my mom
would not let him
But that he did get me a pony
Even though
my grandmother had a cow
Boy, I had fun on Candy
Thanks to you
I had a life
You got me
my first car
And boy
did I blow that
But I’ll always remember
You trusted me
And that’s what counts
Accidents happen
We all know that
But trust is precious
And you gave me that
I never really got to talk
To grandma much before
She left
And I’ve felt terrible about it
Cause things happened so fast
I never got the chance
To tell her I loved her
And thanks and because of her
I’ll always strive to be a lady
So I guess this is why
I write to you
I fear losing you
And I don’t want you to go
And hopefully
it won’t be too soon
But I want you to know
That I love you so much
And I Thank You for everything
You are my Poppie
And that’s more
Than any Dad could be!!!
You’ll always be my Iron Horse
“I’m an Iron Horse”
You know you use to tell me that
As I’d find your beer
In the washing machine
And pour it out
I’d say Poppie
You should not drink so much
And you’d say
I’m an Iron Horse
Nothing’s going to get to me
Well I will never forget those days
Because you always treated me kind
You didn’t have to tell me you loved me
I just knew you did
Because you were always there for me
I wish I could be there for you
And if you need me
I’ll be there
I know my Iron Horse
Is strong
And does not want me there
I know these words will have to do
I hope you will read these words
For many years to come
Because you deserve to know
How special you are
I just didn’t want time
To get the best of me
Before I had the chance
To tell you, I love you
I LOVE YOU
Written around 1993
Random Notes and Thoughts today upon typing this up from the faded fax paper this was originally printed on (1/7/2018): My grandfather had to have a section of his colon removed due to having colon cancer some-time around 1992-1994. He was fortunate they were able to remove it without him having to have a colostomy bag. He went on to live until December 6, 2006. I was there at his side when he died. He had remarried a Jewish woman, and in some respects to appease her took on that faith, more so in name only. When I saw him fading, I asked her if a priest or something could come to the house to read him his last rights. She looked down on me as she said, we do not have priests, we have Rabbis’ and I said, well do they do anything to read someone their last rights? Needless to say she went to search the matter and called the Rabbi, who came within minutes of my grandfather passing. My mom and I were singing songs, as he passed, with his hand in mine. A tear of blood came from his eye shortly thereafter.
I gently closed his lids, and his wife looked at me and said you don’t need to do that. Yet when the rabbi came, he read a modified version of his last rights and shared a prayer, and looked at my grandfather’s wife, and said, I see his eyes have been closed, for that is the last respect to give.
Before my grandfather slipped away, I spoke to him and told him to hold on tight until he made it through his passing, to not listen to voices or images meant to distract him, but to keep focused on his journey home to God. That afternoon he had been calling out to his mother, as if he may have seen her there amidst the ether of the room or in his visions playing out before him, perchance welcoming him to reunite with loved ones.
I grew up next door to him for the first nine years of my life. My mother having been married so many times, I idealized the fact my grandparents had one marriage for life until my grandmother died, and even though my grandfather was an alcoholic, he always was like a father to me. He quit drinking at the age of 55 as well as quitting cigarettes. He lived to be 86. He was on five different carriers during World War II, where he learned to make alcohol out of torpedo fuel. He retired as a Chief in the Navy and went on to have a Radiator Business until a few years before his passing.
He left home at the age of 15 to join the Navy. He had hard times, as his father left the family during the Depression, and was rumored to have become a hobo traveling on the trains, and it is thought one day he was killed by getting ran over by a train. When he first went to AA meetings he wanted me as a teen to join him, and I did to support him. He used to say just learn to put the plug in the jug, and was a founding member of a group that still meets at the church he was in a group to first establish there. I learned to hear the accounts of human travails at the age of 13 from alcohol abuse. It gave me empathy for these individuals, for I knew firsthand of the toils of these matters from being a witness of his life during my youth.
My mother and I know he may not have been her biological father, yet may all be well with his soul, for a true father figure he was to me. My mom would say, he would drink when she was young and claim she was his bastard child, and that was hard on her. I had pictures of my grandmother, my mother borrowed and has not returned and claims she does not know where they are, but in them my grandmother was pictured all over Europe. She had pictures in stately hotel rooms, as well as in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and also pictures of the Pope in Rome overlooking the crowds, where she took the pictures from. I started wondering who took these pictures of my grandmother, especially one where she was on a chaise along a beach, looking rather charming. Who perchance was she looking at?
A silver thread: (The toils of the needs of children to have the love, shade, and blessings of a father embodied in this…perchance for me at the crux of my journey seeking the blessings of the divine Father welling within me over time, for even when I was told I was nothing and would never be, I knew inside me, God knew I was someone, and for that I learned to survive the trials of life, believing always near me under his protection I would be…)
The Mind is a Garden Thirsty for Knowledge 