The Uncle Poem

avuncular

trees

or was it avuncular skyscrapers?

yea it was the skyscrapers but

I don’t know man

I remember it was tuesday

the cars were doing their

normal car shit some asshole

was blasting Puccini

out of his BMW and some other

asshole was singing

an opera as he walked

down Main Street

what else

I saw my grandmother

this wasn’t anything crazy tho

she’s still alive and all that

she lives in town she was

driving her convertible

very slow I waved at her but

I’m not sure she recognized me

no other family interactions to report

something about the day unsettled me tho

in the worst way possible

I knew I would be going home soon

home to the hills where

hill things happen

but I had thrown that terror into the future

like a baseball or a bag of trash

and of course it is the future now but I’m not

in the hills not yet

so why were the skyscrapers

avuncular to me

me who had many uncles none

of whom were skyscrapers

I think I have a few less uncles

now but it’s hard to keep track

big family and you know what

they say uncles are like crab apples they wither

maybe it was that it

smelled like crab apples

while I walked down Main Street

I don’t know where

that quote comes from probably

someone famous but I remember my uncle

saying it and it seems like a quote

about your uncles dying but that uncle

wasn’t dying not yet he was

very much alive and very much

addicted to oxycodone

but the consequences would be

far in the future but I guess

the future is now which means

the consequences have already happened

which makes perfect sense

because that uncle died

tho not of overdosing exactly he died

of a heart attack induced by fireworks

on the fourth of  July one of three

citizens to do so in the county that day I

do not know what made hearts

so angry on that particular fourth it was warm

but when wasn’t it

warm in the valley I wasn’t

there when my uncle died I

had picked up overtime

at the call center because

I needed money to buy

some oxycodone

for myself

I was planning to buy it

off of him tho obviously that

would be impossible because he is dead and

altho it doesn’t mean his pills are gone

it does mean it would be super

uncool to break into his trailer

and steal them I have

determined that he is the uncle I am referring to when I said

the skyscrapers were avuncular

tho referring isn’t the right word

I didn’t intend to call them avuncular

I felt it and it wouldn’t go away

like a dog bite

but what made the skyscrapers

so avuncular my uncle had never been

to the city and possibly had never been

to any city he was country from his hair to the tip

of each toe he was so country that his countryness stretched

out from his body and into his car

maybe it’s because he never

saw these skyscrapers that I

think of  him tho that

is bullshit and I know it so why the fuck

could I not push the avuncular

skyscrapers out of my decidedly

non-avuncular brain

was it the windows? the

black paneling?

maybe it isn’t the building at all

maybe it’s the idea of the building

and tho I don’t believe in ideas

I do believe in uncles

maybe it is that the building

is so high it would take minutes to elevator up

and maybe an hour to climb

which means by the top you would be in

the future the real future the future minutes

away not seconds a future farther than

a word is from another word and maybe

because I look

at the skyscraper from the top down

I think of those elevators in reverse

which means I think of the future in reverse

and if those elevators go enough

the future will reverse enough to be the past

like the real past

like a few months ago when my

uncle was breathing and taking

pills and feeling the high

come on like television static

turning into tv or like tv

turning into television static