They took my father's hair
and placed it in a bag
full of scalps.
They stripped him down
to pure radiation
under the hypodermic light.
They revealed his feet
to be old man's feet,
bluish and big as lobsters,
shamelessly naked.
They crammed him in a metal crib
that teaches age to babble.
Oh doctor, beware
my father, he was a giant once.
The nails feared his hammer.
You skinny boneman,
he could snap you in two
and would, too. Good.
They've brought him low
to this place of alones,
where bones ache with the blues.
Exiled from his home
that he nailed to the earth
to this cell of Lysol and excrement.
I watch as a nurse,
brisk and efficient
as a hotel napkin, wheels him
toward the corner of his fate.
His last words: "I'll get home.
Wait. And See."
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