My daughter asks me
In early May of 2024 my daughter asks me
“Daddy, what war is it?”
Like the calendar day or the season.
I receive the question like a windshield
receives a brick.
My daughter tells me
she told her friends about my friend
who “didn’t make it.”
I don’t tell her
that he wasn’t the only one
and that I know that I have more
who won’t “make it.”
I don’t tell her
that I felt like I didn’t do enough
and that every day since
has been an effort to help.
I don’t tell her that setting boundaries
has felt like abandonment
or that in the wake of it
I still struggle more.
But on May 31st my daughter is on two wheels
and “I did it, Daddy!”
tells me I spent the day as I should have
and all at once I feel
whole
and accomplished
and enough.
Too Sad to Stay
sounds like something
we tell our kids
or ourselves
to alleviate pain
and guilt
and shame
and how we recall stories
attached to names.
“Too weak to hold on”
sounds like something
born from
resentment
destined
for a long angry life.
When it doesn’t get better
but it also gets worse
and what’s worst
is that it never seems
to have an end
in sight that could ever
provide better days
without getting jumped
by the circumstances
that surround us
and I know it feels this way
and I’ve felt it feel like it always will
but I’ve never felt like there wasn’t something
I could do about it for
a momentary feeling of relief.
So I’m gonna stop writing
about the ones who were
too sad to stay here
and I’ll write more
about the ones who stuck around
who I would trust
with my child in their lap
or my dog at their feet
or with violent errands to complete with me.
But good god damn.
My, how the years
have taken both types.
My, how the years
have turned one to the other.
My, how the years
have turned one against the other.
My, how the years
have teased out the sense of things.
We used to eat
to get full
now we just eat
to hold
ourselves over.
“Checking in” is Dying Slow
It’s a day like any day
and I feel compelled to tell y’all:
I’m tired.
I don’t wish for intervention for another minute.
One time wouldn’t change it,
wouldn’t change one goddamn or fuck given,
not for the next time,
not for the last time.
The time after that, the
phone wouldn’t ring,
pistol wouldn’t jam,
memory wouldn’t surface,
life wouldn’t flash
before any man, woman, child’s eyes
except those unconditionals left behind.
Bed down with those blues.
Get a realtor to walk you through your tomb.
Eat every last scrap of your woes
Y’all been knowing I got my own.
“Checking in” and being checked on
Is a littered life with an empty death song.
Who asks me?
Who renders aid?
Who will stop the bleeding?
Am I alert?
Are you talking to a corpse again?
Where do I lay in the casualty collection point
if I don’t even have a desire to paint the wall
with my pistol? Am I urgent surgical
if I piss and moan? Am I ambulatory
if I can’t bring myself to get the fuck
out of my own way?
“Where do we go from here?”
“Well, where have you been?”
So check in when you wanna.
Murphy’s law’ll call it.
Fall apart on fallen’s headstones into
a fool’s tumble for eternity:
I am a fraud if I have not fought myself
for my own life, says the headline.
Keith Walter Dow was born and raised in New England, spending his adolescence in the Seacoast of New Hampshire and the greater Boston area until enlisting in the US Army in his early twenties. He holds a Bachelor of Human Services Degree from Georgian College and a Master of Social Work from the University of New England. He is the co-founder of Dead Reckoning Collective and the Joshua Tree Writers Retreat as well as the Director of Care Coordination & Immediate Needs at Hunter Seven Foundation. His debut poetry collection, Karmic Purgatory, is available now. His writing has appeared in In Love & War: The Anthology of Poet Warriors, Coffee or Die Magazine, Headspace & Timing, and other publications.
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