PopPop

He left the city at 70

for an abandoned coal mine

in Western Pennsylvania

after Grandmom died in the living room

from cold legs

she caught after decades of watching him

wash down pieces of styrofoam 

with miniature bottles of coke or yoohoo.

The most quiet man to ever reproduce, Bob.

Their row home was dark and warm, 

lit only by kerosene lamps and a television. 

He'd make me to turn the volume 

all the way up while watching
Lindros-era hockey

so we didn't have to listen the dozens 

of Puerto Rican teenagers
fucking each other

at the same time
in separate closets and bathrooms

next door, 

on both sides.

"Ignore the fuck, 

just watch the puck."

he and then his beloved
homosexual brother parakeets he kept
in cages on either sides of his
cigarette filter brown colored Lazy-Boy recliner
would urge my father and I. 

Barney and Oliver. 

Their twin birds of paradise
also remembered my name.

They sang horror movie theme songs to me

as I trembled upstairs on the floor

of my dads childhood bedroom

surround by cardboard boxes 

full of my mothers fake id's

and shoplifted leather jackets

in my grandmothers silk underwear,

begging to get through a night without

pissing myself in her old panties,

praying to god

under a shower curtain for a blanket 

that my mom would stop

breaking things over my quiet father's head

while he

absolutely 

dominated the Nintendo 

in our family's honor.

I was a five-year-old peace negotiator,
already hooked on blue Doritos
with a chronic bedwetting disorder.

But I was born to Piss.

Poppop Robert never confronted me 

about dry rotting the floor boards 

or filling the bathtub with his shoes and 

my dad's pornos and shaving cream.

I don't know, maybe he didn't notice 

the car-sized hole that I pissed 

through the ceiling above the chair
that he slept in with his shoes on.
I could poke my arm though the hole
and throw my dads spare change or
wedding ring at the birds
while they fucked right next to my
grandfathers head.
He never noticed.
Or maybe he was pretending, I'll never know. 

He had more important things to worry about, perhaps. 

Barney and Oliver were rapidly learning
the Spanish language 

and started calling Lindros a, "Pussy"
after each one of his concussions.

By now

The Puerto Ricans had invaded Church street 

and had flipped his car
so many times
that he'd stopped going to work.
there where brown children living in
the back yard
feeding on trash bags and patio furniture.

John LeClair
scored fifty-six greasy goals that year,
losing four teeth and the Stanley Cup
to those perverts, the Russians.

I had lost my grandmother
but only two molars from an ashtray
fight with my brother.

Those nights were hard. 

A few years later, my father rounded up all of the kids

in his Plymouth Voyager for a trip to visit the old man, 

with my mother still in a Texas
shopping center
Drug Jail at this point
after calling in bomb threat
to my kindergarten.  

He looked tiny and wet

sweating like one of his cold coke bottles. 

He took careful steps around carcasses and bones 

of the rotisserie chickens that lined the floor of his cave,

mumbling the same way that I now do

about

his lungs being filled with black paint 

and bird feathers

but insisting he'd caught the disease from the 

stacks of yellowed newspaper he'd been using 

as a box spring for his twin mattress.  

Barney and Oliver he said, 

had flown back east to Philly 

to protect Grandmom's tomb that we'd 

made out of the windows and doors 

of the old Krauss House.

"Those two faggots"

I knew it was the end.

Eric Lindos had lost his vision
after one to many naps on the ice.  

He's said, "Give me a hug, but not a kiss..

kisses are for girls, 

Richie... just a hug."

And with that embrace he passed on the curse. 

it was my turn. 

I said goodbye and crept backwards toward 

where I thought there might still be sunlight, 

looking over my shoulder one last time with 

child tears in my eyes.  

He knew I had a million questions

but no choice.

My prepubescent voice echoed 

throughout the uninhabited chambers

of the collapsing mine:

"GO FLYERS"