My Brother...You are Right...Even when You are Wrong...

My Brother...You are Right...Even when You are Wrong...
(Written 12/19/2014)

Yesterday...we had a long, long talk on the phone...
you were drunk, as usual...good humoring required...
the person is present...mind is no longer home...
alcohol is poison in the brain...neurons fire
at a far lowered rate...thoughts arrive late...soon gone...

Like father...like son...is your tragic legacy...
your life...like driftwood...that never washes ashore...
illusions of the past...your present lunacy...
can never get enough whiskey...always need more...
a son's life lost...daughter's rejection...sad to see...

Your first words to me were..."The search is now full on!"
I asked you what that means...you began to explain...
overt advances toward a woman were wrong...
she soon rejected you and that drives you insane...
"how can she reject this manly man?" same tired song...

Some men and women are so fearful to live life...
they become obsessed with romantic love...the test...
to prove their manhood or womanhood...not alive...
without sexual fulfillment...romantic love's zest...
in routines...romantic love lost...over time...

And so a young man, close, feels for your sorry plight...
and tells you he is going to find you a new love...
one that will make you feel like a man day and night...
"one" that will fit onto your life like hand in glove...
as the woman sees you...you are a sorry sight...

Sixty-two going on eighty-five...thin as a rail...
fifty years of smoking and drinking...takes its toll...
soon you will be confined to a chair...watch health fail...
sense you will soon be one more marker on the knoll...
yet there is much good in you...behind the dark veil...

My brother...you are right...even when you are wrong...
enjoy your life...what is left...of eventide's song...
you will not change, now, what you never understood...
to your very end...into sunset...drifting wood...

Copyright Timothy Ray Walls 2021