White Picket Face-Off

Highway numb, driving speed: anticipation,

to family reunion with no elation

a who's who of veiled blame, smiles of muted guilt

where each comes undone as soured wine be spilt.

Oh, table of unruly eaters! Patriarch shamed,

matriarch by his philandering maimed;

daughter mauled in maws of self-abnegation

prodigal son, aloof, seeks abdication -

and what of the kitchen cutting board,

phantom stacks of Gran's burnt blind argument toast?

Welts underneath deep from dulled swords - 

some claim to have seen even chairs quit such hosts.

Upon arrival: father couched, immobile;

mother-sister kitchen-fluster, require help;

air thick with provocation, dinner baked with bile

from two decades' cold hearts seldom held.

Method of madness same as always

as ego wars guilt what their shame entombs;

stroll lost halls of Home, slumped in malaise

with not a thought to erecting new rooms.

Those with many things in their hearts are poor,

a life's quest is not a manner of mansion;

thirst for novelty unquenched, happiness a bore

"let's downsize" - kids gone - grief's expansion.

So out with the old, into new house,

same different tongues & no dictionaries

or will to live & love without grouse - 

battle of generational dignitaries.

Would that I could their brains lobotomize!

Divest me from these robes of mitigation,

that at least one dinner might capitalize

on stocks of love, not litigation!

Alas! I cannot, with years have grown tired

of fruitless attempts to lessen contempt,

there's naught I can do for all grievance acquired

but sadly let distance make me exempt.

Pedro B. Gorman

29.04.2021