for Mom

looking back
like some insane kid
i remember there being laughter
when I was four years old
the three of us
going to Mexico
in some station wagon
where there was a seven year old girl
with my younger brother on her lap
in the backseat
and some kid named Miguel
playing with metal Hot Wheels
in the trunk area.

i know now
that i should never be a vegan,
for some reason this epiphany
seems to resonate with my mother's laugh
and her simple way of always having
beer in the fridge
that isn't awful
but more humanly kind
than any idiot philosophy

i don't know,
these days i feel apart
from friends
and have had to scurry
with tactile thoughts
above the past
so that life seems to come plainly
from memories such as Tijuana
and Rosarito,
those unpretensious vacationing spots
where my mother
brought the poor Mexicans clothing for their children
when we were too young
to know what sleeping in a dead car means,
all that sadness
that came from without
marked with blossoms of something simple
like the lights in a blue swimming pool at night
before her drunk friend
bartered for a piggy bank in the shape of a cartoon character,

for all of that
i am more thankful
than the things i have done in my life
so can i just say
that there ought to be some word
besides 'love'
that we can say to our mothers,
maybe a different one each day
otherwise
this world is just madness.