Burned Out and Buried with a Golden Shovel

after Ozzy Osbourne

Young and dumb, I didn’t know shit about the mental
health of first born sons whose father’s war wounds
burn inside and slowly eat away at them, not
killing the host, but like a good virus, not healing
either. The counselor saw but your dad cut him off, “Life’s
a bitch,” and pulled you out of school. I came by a
few times, he was always there, sitting at the table, drinking bitter
coffee, nodding to the shag-carpeted stairs, and “shame
he’s sick again.” I snuck up once but you turned me away, “I’m
done here, get out”, while refusing to show your face. I got goin’
not realizing that was goodbye. You turned eighteen and tore off
out of town. You were a ghost and I dreamed you found the
way free of the rundown farm with its broken fence rails
to fly in your T-top Camaro, wind in your hair on
a highway somewhere. But that was my dream and it only took a
letter from your mom to bring you back. Angry, crazy
eyes, you stormed in after he was hit with the cancer train.
Did you come to find him or find him dead? I’m
not sure. Whatever you got just fueled the hurt goin’
on inside you. When the nurse called it, you took off
again, religious trinkets knocked to the floor. The
path you found ran tracks up your arms, rails
festering under his weight and black tar on
your mad, hell-bent rush to burn out any hint of a
desire to love and hate him in the same mind without going crazy,
while you splayed yourself on the tracks and prayed for the train

Rick Pongratz is an emerging writer. His writing appears or is forthcoming in Rattle, Bellevue Literary Review, Unbroken, Modern Haiku, and elsewhere. Rick works as a mental health clinician and studies creative writing at Idaho State University. He currently resides in Idaho where he enjoys getting lost in the woods with his dog.