Poetry Thursday

Angel Sammys and Teddys Pawetaton gave us a picture for inspiration

Daddy said get the kids together we are going to the beach.

I grabbed my flip flops, my towel, anything I could reach.

But when we arrived I was left without speech

The only fish who could survive in this water would be a leach.

 

Mama said: “I thought we were going to someplace nice,

Not a patch of sand being watched by police vice.”

“There is nothing wrong,” Papa said “push away the grease.

And don’t drink the water or your dysentery will never cease.”

 

They stepped between the broken bottles and a discarded flat tire.

And tried not to hear the sound of sporadic gunfire.

But wading into the water they saw the quagmire.

Because the water lapping the beach was on fire.

 

“Let’s all go for a swim,”

Daddy said, most dim.

His son was texting cousin left-handed Tim

To tell him he recognized, floating by, his missing limb.

 

“I don’t understand, you all wanted to go to the beach,” Papa said.

His wife answered sharply “we wanted to go somewhere that we didn’t have to share a blanket with the dead.”

Papa reminded her they conceived their son on this beach the night they were wed.

She answered “that is why he has three nipples, one testicle, half a kidney and a thumb growing out of his forehead.”

 

She told the kids they would not be swimming there today

The beach had been closed by the EPA.

From the beach they quickly drove away

And three days later they needed their privates to receive an x-ray.

 

The family never returned to that part of the shore

And the mother lived the rest of her life indoor.

One daughter became a nun, the other a whore

While the son grew to resemble a minotaur