Daddy Issues: Various poems inspired by my father
god | masculinity | love | healing | writing therapy
This a collection of writing that probably will end up as one long poem with various titles.
This War
In retrospect
For me
With him
The debate over the concept of a god
was an empty subject
A socially textured canvas that platformed and framed a conflict that I needed
It was a place I finally felt I could win
Still trying to notch victories into my belt
Still secretly chasing his respect
For him
The largest hurdle
Far taller than the romantic and unprovable was
clearing the ego of a son who still
has something to prove
I forgive myself
He started this silent war
A war that I now recognize
I lost many years ago
A war that a far flung rendition of him still
taunts me from an internal battlefield
My chase still positions him the
overseer of my self-value
He harbors in his chest remnants torn from me
Pieces I still emotionally believe I need
Pieces that are scattered among the heaps
of keepsakes torn from others
Pieces that even after death
he still unknowingly wades through
There is a bruised and angry boy
inside of my bones who longs for redemption
Or just to be seen
Valued
A boy that doesn't understand death
A boy blinded in pain chasing redemption off
into the foggy distance
I hope there are no cliffs or walls
Life teaches me
There most certainly are cliffs and walls
He’s gone
yet
we are not done debating
He’s not done pissing me off
I still give him shit for not being more
I still give him shit for me not being more in his eyes
I still abuse myself for not being what he wishes
I still practice points to dent
his gotcha grin
Yes THIS war
I still re-wage
Man Enough
After a fun night with family we head home
Daddy is silent
I assume he is tired
contemplating the day
But something heavier hangs in the air
As we ride in silence
he turns his face from me
seemingly crumples himself in the
crevice of seat and door
I sense he wants to float away from it all
Not think about the pending end
A muffled wimpier
The sharp sound of a sniff cuts the
silence with truth
Daddy is crying
Daddy is contemplating life
Contemplating his pending death
I sit silent
No clue what to say
Choosing to preoccupy all of my focus on a dark
empty road that doesn't require preoccupation
Everything I consider saying sounds like
I am trying to sugar-coat a turd
In my man-thinking there is only one thing left
Only one thing is understood and
soon will be realized
Father,,,,,
In the coming weeks
You will die
There is no brightside in this chapter
Nothing that I can say to soften realty’s hand
Nothing textured enough to hang romanticism on
He’s not ready to go and
It feels offensive for me
with all my unknown years of life
To even utter “alrights” about some shit
that’s
not
alright
I’m supposed to be strong
Manhood preps me to be strong
cuz men are strong
Strong
yet
There is something fragile that
hangs between us
Something delicate and spineless
crouches in the mist of
smoke and mirrors of put on bravado
The smoke has thinned
exposing the mirage of strength as being
something small
and weak
and fucking pathetic
when it mattered
My inability to comfort my father
was not rooted in strength
I dressed up my fears as strength
bowtied it with ribbon of power
Cheated my father out of warmth
Cheated my father out my presence
Yet I have been cheated out of
the luxury of emotional honesty
I am this way because it's expected
He is curled into his corner because
crying even if justified is not expected
Loving and not knowing how to
show love is suffocating
Loving and not being allowed to love
is suffocating
Adhering to "Manhood" can be suffocating
In the end
I was man enough
to abandoned
my father in a
moment of sorrow
and
Not hu-man enough
to hold his hand
Searching
Before his death
Daddy promises me he will return from the afterlife
To prove to me that god is real
I don’t subscribe to such notions
yet
I can admit that on
many a still night
dreamy emotion swirled through my
imaginations and hopes
Intentionally
I look for him
Hope for him
Open myself to abstract glimpses
willing to piece together the mundane nothings
to create clues of his presence
Carefully listening while
contouring the waking life and sleep
Maybe he’s somewhere in the middle
Maybe if I pretend not to hear him I will
I'm not impressed with afterlife
There are things we still need to
discuss beyond this irrelevant
death and god shit
Things we need to iron out
To help me get on with life
Or maybe I just miss you
It’s been years now
There has been nothing
Nothing to flesh out my hopes
Nothing to flesh out his claims
No promising abstractions
I can collage to create presence
just
silence
Oh
but it was that one time....
Petty
... Yes that one time
A singular clue of the afterlife presented itself
on the very night Daddy died
Near my home
I see a woman who I have never seen before
She stands waiting
She is tethered to a delicate leash
On the end of that leash lives captive a
more delicate dog
She hurries the dog along to do its business
She calls this dog
Oliver
My father’s name is
Oliver
This little dog relies on a woman
for warmth
for food
for shelter
for protection
A woman who allows her pet
to lay at her feet and praise only her
A woman who has the power to incite fear with
angry voice and judgmental drumming finger
My father
short-leashed by mere woman
My father
reembodied in a delicate powerless existence
My father
being rushed through any of his business
Snipped from his primal nature
Bred from his prized savagery
Incarnated into this small insignificant
sniveling
pet
My father
The man I know
is a self-domesticated feral creature
If this dog is a sign of the
afterlife for me to heed
god and heaven remains a mystery
But Hell
On the very night of Daddy’s death
Hell screeched of her existence
If there is a god
it is brilliantly petty
Mama’s Vail
I mention to Mama Daddy’s plan to return from the beyond to prove to me god is real
An unexpected laugh
lurches to life taking flight
before she realizes her cage door is open
To her credit
she doing all she can to fix her face
She conjures compassion where none lives
She pretends not to laugh
I pretend not to see it
She hurries to tidy the misplaced response
Drapping her magical vail over her own thoughts
Over her silent history
Over the pain she endured
Tidying her response to be mama-proper
Always the steady and strong warrior
Ever-ready to be present for her beloved in ways
she has never been present for herself
Time and experience has worn Mama’s vail thin
She sometimes misplaces it
It is tear and spit stained
Sloppily patched and bears holes
loosened by the busy fingers of
earned resentment that
crashed into clarity
Beneath that rounded taut vail
the quickening of an
unmama-thought mooooooves
I see it
I expect it
I forgive it
I've pardoned her of every
future infraction a thousand times over
I would prefer a whole-hearted
laugh cherry topped with
“That motherfucker….!!!”
Her vail
A conflict for me
While embracing the inherited protections
as her young
I resent the fragility of my manhood
I resent my tethered connection to the man
Who captured and imprisoned so many
Portions of who she is
I feel unworthy of the facades
I am one of her beloved yet
another mere man she sacrifices herself to
I want no more parts of her sacrifice
No interest in the magic that her vail provides
I am more interested in her capping the vail across her shoulders and her lurching to life and take flight
Before reality realizes she forgot to blame herself
Before reality realizes its cage’s door was left open
After a lifetime of sacrifice
How is it not owed to her
The right to uncage her pacing truth
A truth thats been locked away for everyone's
safety and comfort but her own
Caged in idealisms and Mama do-right that
has outgrown its enclosure
Truths that desire to feel earth press its paw
The earned right to pierce the wind with direction and piss the corners of uncharted lands of her
own being
Mama and Daddy parted a decade earlier
The unexpected laughter
A knee jerk emotion was teased up by
the arrogance that
this man
who lived his life
Has the audacity to believe
if there was a heaven
he has earned some abstract
right to be there
and
travel about at will
Stain
Death normally has a way of allowing
transgressions to be absorbed into sorrow
Daddy’s silence almost felt true
But there is a whisper that laces his absence
You were both the most loving and abusive man that had reach into my life
Part of me wishes that I could choose just the love and if not just the love then just the abuse
Having a mixture of both does something
weird
to my psyche
It disrupts my freedom to love
Yet
I must admit
Through it all
I don’t have much interest
In being a me that wasn’t stained by you
There is something about
the welts left on my emotions
That reads as brailed lesson
That imparts qualities that I hold dear
Thank/fuck you
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