day 2, poem 2 - entreaty

entreaty



Father, I’ve been building

a body worthy of my own

lies, moving it from corner

to open field, from the insides

of dark cars, to the last

bleak bedroom I’ve inhabited.

I’m building it out of the lies I told

myself. I’n building it of the lies

I grew to believe of you – the thighs

of yours I’ve inherited from the foyer

of your bright, bright heart.



I’ve never wanted anything

so much as speed, so much

as the power of limb and fist

and heart; the stadium’s everlasting torrent.

I’ve never wanted anything

so much as to live

under your roof, to be a child

again, and so I revolted all the way

until my 40th birthday.



Father, when I was 18, I held a woman

down, in the front seat of my mother’s

Datsun, and when she finally relented,

I told myself it was because I wanted

her to stay. I pushed myself

into her and called myself a man

for certain. I did not think it rape

until almost 20 years later,

and while I am not alone

in this specific way of men

I wonder how the lie of your

returning again and again – how

the lie of my forever staying,

my body blooming chest and wrinkle

into your spitting image would have molded

me more a man, more capable

of the love I swear I feel

in my stomach but can never seem

to deliver to the women I call

Beloved.



Father, I am trying to rehabilitate

myself in women not yet undone

by me. They let me call them love.

They let me hold them hostage.

They let me live in so many years

whose memories hold you clear –

1974, 1981, 1987, 1994, 06, 07, 08, 09

and I am building out of those lies

a tenement with a thousand rooms.



Here’s a confession: I am not yet really a man.

Here’s a fear: I do not have what it takes

for anything other than a pursuit

which ends in speed, in a crash.

Here’s what I lay at the doorstep

of the morality you taught – you

were always taking your bows

and stepping back. And so

I craved your spotlight. I have

It now. You’ve bequeathed

me the most unfortunate grace,

a body built of granite, a tenement

of a heart, a craving

for nothing but the everlast ovation

that walking away from the stage

can give.