a stroke of luck; ungrateful

While at work
an old woman bickers;
rich people talk here, the language
of the dumb, numb in slang known
only to a tiled civilization
I look at her lips and they are
dry; puckered in peach tea smears
she looks awfully obscured
whinging of a stroke with two working
hands and a chin that smelled of
stained porcelain and bobbling wax;
her children
have long
left home
and the wick
grown shorter
with age; her feet shuffle whispers
beneath the tongue of thick slippers
 and her husband… who is too weary
           to tell the sand from the soil
           sneaks into the shed like a
           child in trouble
       they live in a house
     that tells us whether
   the sea is empty
or full or the sky is
half-arsed and she
 tells me: her life is long
 and damp �" I’m telling her
                              my father had a stroke too
                              he raised four girls and twenty two cats
                              in two houses with a job at a soap company;
                              he was cleansed of all his passions. he has
                              one hand and half a brain left, a chemical drug
                               problem and our barrels are done firing
I’m     soldiering      on, she tells me, one    day at a       time…
and my pride leaves a lump in my throat
           gagging for more.