Tag: abuse

• All our sorrows

  I

  I bring her a bouquet of roses

  and she looks at me tearfully.

  I told myself that I could salvage 

  this, though this was the seventh 

  time. I shouldn’t have let the kid

  watch. I don’t know what punitive

  spirit from oblivion possesses

  me, making me more animal than 

  Nebuchadnezzar during those

  seven years. At least he ate grass.

  I devour everything and everyone 

  leaving just motes of dust 

  on the broken floor. 

  II

  I’m older now, and I think

  I’ve repented. I found God

  and hopefully didn’t lose Him.

  There’s a maelstrom within, 

  breaking sense and reason 

  and I reach for the pills on the 

  table, popping them —

  blue, red, white, 

  hoping for that false peace. 

  No war, no anger, no rage, 

  no hate, no madness, I whisper 

  while walking in circles around

  the table. I’m the splitting image 

  of my mother, but I’m my father’s 

  son. The rake becomes a torture 

  device, the spade a bludgeon, 

  the fork a sharp trident,

  the spoon, an eye-gouging 

  abomination. I fought everything 

  and everyone and when the

  dust settles on the broken floor,

  will I weep or kneel embracing 

  a Pyrrhic victory?

  III

  I love the boy and hate the man. 

  Sometimes I think I loved

  him a little too much, 

  but I did everything to be someone

  my mother wasn’t. I tried my best, 

  but I often feel like I’m cursed.

  Now my joints break, 

  a sharp unpleasant warmth 

  rushes through my body, which 

  no amount of insulin can cure.

  How long God? The boy says God

  doesn’t care about our brokenness. 

  We’ve argued and 

  fought, and. though he is 

  his father’s son, there’s another side —

  a sweet song from unknown depths, 

  urging him to be more than 

  some soul-crushing Goliath 

  with a tongue sharper than a razor

  and fists of steel. Is love enough?

  When the dust settles on the 

  broken floor, will everything 

  and everyone mean something? 

  September 17, 2023

  abuse, family, life, love, pain, poem, poetry, relationships, suffering

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• The streets called your name

  When you were young, 

  the streets called your name, 

  beckoning you to go places, 

  explore, search, and discover. 

  And though your father’s 

  madness and obsessions 

  pushed you into corners

  while mother wept, telling 

  herself she loved the brute 

  despite the rancour that bit her

  with each fist raised or choke, 

  you listened and meandered along 

  alleyways filled with scrap 

  and yesterday’s bones, oblivious 

  that one day you’d see the potholes, 

  the used needles, the trash,

  and the dog shit for what it is, 

  stripped off innocence or 

  more importantly, naïveté 

  because you lost your innocence 

  when the madman howled like

  a rabid dog, screaming, 

  “This hurts me too!”

  as if the slaps and curses and 

  the gnashing of teeth, 

  was simply discipline, 

  a mild spanking while you 

  watched mother fend him off, 

  a beast from a realm far from 

  Bethlehem, a demon of death, 

  a psychopath of the ‘old school’

  his father and his father’s father

  were part of. Today you no longer 

  step on those roads 

  regardless of if the sun gleams 

  off the asphalt or if puddles 

  of water prevent movement. 

  You’re not listening, you stopped

  a long time ago, the silence of 

  enclosed spaces your reality, 

  meaning and wanderlust 

  motes in the attic, or worse, 

  fabrications of distorted minds. 

  July 4, 2023

  abuse, childhood, depression, innocence, life, Poems, poetry

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