The house has been tired for years.
Grandpa painted it just before the cast came off.
Way above the shutters with one plaster arm
hooked in a rung, he yelled, “Grandmother’s gone mad
and your aunts won’t do nothing.
Your uncle don’t even matter. But it’s okay.
See, the rollers are better these days.
It’s easier than it must look from down there.
Now that I’m almost done, I’m still not sure about the color.”
The next summer was all he could take.
Heat tolled on his body. Nodding off lonely,
the scorch set in; his heart wouldn’t hold him up.
Descendants had edged in on his piece of the porch.
The hum of the buzz of the stuff in his house
ran him out long before the floor ‘d given out,
and he built it back up to hold in the noise.
The toys in the carpet interrupted his slippers,
and the letters stopped coming from kin.
“It’s the end of my time, he yelled to his doctors,
no more renovations. Raze the place.
Someone else’ll take ove
