"Letter Poem To You Ange"

                                                     
             
                Dear Ange,     
                 
                        I hate that pale sadness in your eyes; as ancient ruins of time rain down upon your soiled bedhead from late afternoon's glorified heavens. There's an orange tabby alley cat that rests upon your Eastern porch amidst daytime's scattered thunderstorms Ange. Morning showers and petrified cathedral hours; stained glass bathtub curtains, Jack Daniel's marmalade baptist pilgrims stunted your growth once again Ange. I got the razor-cut blues back home on the 2nd floor of nowhere. As shaving cream sink-suds make their way from the bathroom sink to the rotted wooden-tiled floorboards below.
                       The cunning insidious dog-days of August caught me in a too familiar bind once again Ange. Kitchen cupboard upholstery anti-depressants (non-narcotic) and drowsily. Screen-window air conditioning anti freeze units Ange, Folgers instant coffee grounds, melancholy filtering concentrated Vitamin C citric acidic, Thunderbird tombstone series Ange. Pencil scribbled manuscripts stuffed into loose-leaf paper balls, forced way down deep into black backpack zipper compartments in the dull corner of a drywall non-electric facility. Past-gathered phone numbers and year old daydreams manifest nightly, interwoven in the confines of unfathomable crazy misery for me Ange.
                       Sticky sweet and sugary, freezer-burnt pop-sickle madness for me Ange, as the dark silhouetted backyard maples sleep in drought-like anticipation. Another Summer gone to waste along the borderline foothills of Arizona. You Ange, probably back home in Pittsburgh PA, with a dingy neighborhood roof over your drunken head. I'll be able to make it back home for the holidays this year Ange, if I play my cards right and don't end up back in the county. Last year at this time you lost custody of our eleven month old daughter Karina, Ange. I can't imagine the pain you feel when you mount the household stairs past our wall-hung family portrait, taken by your mother on the way back from the hospital. I know it's gotta be a lot tougher for a woman than me Ange, losing our daughter and all to the Keystone State's foster-care system.
                     I haven't been able to get a hold of your brother Tom lately Ange. He hasn't been returning any of my calls. Say a prayer for me Ange, next week at this time I'll be going in front of District Judge Carlisle. My parole officer says I got nothing to worry about, (considering the hearsay, and the 30-day rehab-bid).  As always you'll be in my prayers Ange, thank god for social security eh? I'll keep you posted on everything in these letters Ange, hopefully you won't be getting any telephone calls from me any time soon, cause you know what that will mean.        
   
                                        Sincerely your friend and lover, Stanley Boothe