A Wildcatter Calls it Quits

A Wildcatter Calls it Quits

At twenty, more money than brains,
he spent weekends in Vegas paying for a good time.
He once blew fifteen grand on roulette
and the women, oh the women,
their ever-red fingernails and the makeup
that only the steam of the jacuzzi could lift.

Ten years after the bust,
he buys capped wells and
pumps what is left.
Sometimes, like this time,
he takes his wife and kids to Dallas
to swim in the hotel pool.
He camps out in the sauna, waiting
for someone to listen to stories of blackjack
and thousand dollar hookers.

Corral, 1994. 

Prayer and Absolution

Prayer and Absolution

    - A prayer from an adopted son to his birth father.

1.

Sleeveless Father of my biology,
of blood, sweat,         Semen.
Who willed to me only knowledge
Of pain and paper.

Forgive me
for always seeing you angry –
Rejecting icons of age:
Wife, Job, House,         Son.

Allow me to accept your hands upon my chest,
splitting my cage,
clutching that organ so mistakenly called the soul.


2.

People say dark makes it easy for souls
to leave, to escape tired bodies.
But that is not true.
He is here.
Always.
Composed within my flesh.

The blood and semen of this sleeveless man,
swaggering toward me, arched hand drawing
dotted lines of pain across my face.

Willing to me,
O Son of Things to be Forgotten,
Knowledge
That our existence together
Was never one of hope
But always        Burden.

A-Men



Rick Schochler, 1993
Published Originally in The Corral