Lines to a Father on His Day
While Listening to Chopin (Scherzo in c-sharp minor)
Played by Radslav Kvapil
and Reading Joe R. Lansdale (A Fine Dark Line)
June 15, 2003
by Henry Bob Kulup
If you are right about the world
then I want no part of it.
I have only not killed myself
because I think you’re wrong.
Your true hell is knowing either way.
My true heaven? Blowing with this
such dust motes away.
You who with your whipping
misled, misfed me, and your
brothers, dirty old men all who seduce
with army bands my brothers to war,
that world of blood and noise and fists
is yours, endures pieacemeal,
smash and heal, smash and heal, while
this one, mine, slides invisible
twixt your old screams to the stars.
Beat me, kill me, try even finally
when you’re old to atone. Whether
you do or even can, the song,
once sung, is free of your
trapped, bloody kind. Listen! Dogs’
ears can hear it riding a solar
wind way, way out beyond
Uranus.
I know, they get em young, like
they got you. And I know,
you later tried to remove
the scars your hand put on my back,
to erase my pain as if it never
happened. What kind of tiger thinks
to vomit up its tasty eland
and set it bounding once more?
END
A
Fine Dark Line
takes you to amazon.com. |
