Hey, I haven't updated this thing in a while, which is just neglectful.

Anyway, internet, things are changing slowly. I've moved to Oklahoma City and in with my dear friends Rob and Karen. They're so nice to have given me their extra room, as I couldn't stand being in Tulsa any longer. Things there were just... not cool. I didn't want this to be a post about me, though, but about my father. He's a fantastic writer, and though he may have been out of my life for a long time, I still love and respect him. I hope to show him some respect by getting his writings and poetry up on here just to share with everyone, because I think it would be a good thing to do.

 This is called Uncle George, or Bottle Caps and Violet

  That young man threw that bottle cap far as he could across the road and he still carried the warload from town to town and down every dusty road.
  He started drinking in his young life and he took it cross the rail to no days of wishful thinking and scraping nickles for his bail. And those drivers speed on past him and he lives there out on bail for crying over coffee and the dead friends he cannot hail.
  And if you see him a dollar would hurt his feelings though you can just drop it in his pail and let him find it with his still clean fingernails, cause he's so proud about his little girl.
  And his mama spoke to him of Heaven where we could all of us one day go. There was no lie in what she told him never missing one detail. And he thought of alternatives as he pitched the empty bottle across the rails...
  And he carries a five gallon bucket and washes windows where [he] can and you may see him through them; he's that silent bent young man...
  And he's gentle, yes, he's gentle as he holds out broken fingers, from a fight with a younger man, who said words and things that no real man could stand. There's no pity for the bleeding from the knuckles and broken fingers of both hands.
  And his teeth and jaws don't work now as he drinks his brew from an abandoned empty can...
  And you know he'll likely end his life by freezing beside those same old rusty rails with bottle caps on his eyelids, bruised and battered by a life he's lived too long. And his daddy, was he wishing for those summer days of fishing in some other foreign land?
  He lived much as he ended beside those singing rusty rails with bottle caps and bottle caps when he couldn't sleep in jail for the demons screaming at him through the bars and across the rusty rails... And one daughter who will mourn him though she surmises and puzzles the details...
  And there was laughter in the beginning as, "Well we'll live forever," as the bible told him without fail.
  And his last thought was of Jesus's hands where they placed those Roman nails and hallelujah was the reward after a night in a cold damp cell; beaten but not broken on the byways of hell.
  And just down there the railroad crossing and those diesels without bells and the crossing open calling to a life he'd live so well... Beyond these rusty rails...
  They found him frozen clutching spikes instead of nails and bottle caps on his eyelids and a smile that spoke of Heaven's beauteous golden halls, and bottle caps for his eyelids...
  Is there a lesson for us all?
  And I think his last word was Violet, even though she'd left him years before, and he just saw a face in the window as he was reaching for the door...

O.W.S (Owen (or Owin, like owing) W. Splurge is his pen name)
Copyright Richard Davis, 21 May, 2006