Papa, we shall never have peace
No, nor will we weather the storm.I didn’t need the three o’clock moral
fables of
Full Houseto tell me every
daughter wants to be daddy’s
dream girlBut you made that impossible for me
like
limboing only under the bar
of my rapidly falling expectations of
paternity the result --
laying on the hard cement --
takes me back to being seven all over again:
escaped to the sidewalk,
stretched out and day dreaming
that my daddy was really
some
knight in actual armour, a
missionaryin some distant, infectious jungle
anything
but this image of
Jack Kerouac meets
Mickey Knox:
some crazy cruel genius
who can treat a little girls' heart like a
wishbone,
snapping it with the cyclical regularity of a seasonal
turkey.
Papa, we shall never have peace
No, nor will we weather the storm.When the winds of heartbreak
bluster and I’ve lost the will to
duck and coverin this sandstorm
what will be left over?
I’ll become the broken bones of a
buffalobleached and scoured clean
calcium worn to a fine sheen
nothing of the animal left
there’s enough of that in you
for us both.
Compared to the violations
backhands and dirty words of stepfathersyou could have been my
gentle giantheld me up, pulled me above
cradled me within a
reed like
Prometheus’ spark -- mythology only.
You, your cruelty was so much more exacting
than
the dull, unhoned ache of those pains.
I know why you love your lies,
I won’t pretend I don’t.
It’s easier to say the right thing,
whatever words are weighted with strings of anticipation,
than the truth.
Your
fictions were always more fascinating
but did nothing
to assuage a young girl's
fear of abandonment& my life became a
film reel displaying that theme
rolling over rolling overto start again with the same
separation.
Papa, we shall never have peace
No, nor will we weather the storm.I remember, the one time
you met
the love of my life,
your nonchalance
“Glad to see he’s a
good hippy boy”
As if he were
As if he stood in your
shoesAs if you had some
say.
and a father might, but not you
forever more absent than presentyour presence
punctuating my life every five or seven years
with an evening – dinner or a trip to the zoo --
just often enough to create memories
to
underscore the subsequent years of
silence.
& it turns out little girls are more like
puppiesbecause they will come back & back & back
to seek the hand that hurts them.I never once failed to be hopeful,
which allowed you to never fail to find
some form or avenue for betrayal.
Papa, we shall never have peace
No, nor will we weather the storm.It took me 25 years to be honest with myself about you
& that’s still about as far as the honesty goes –
I’m
your daughter, after all
& between my mistruths
I don’t miss you & in the eyes of my lies
I think aught of you & I wish
that were true.
It turns out I'm more like
sandstone than
granite:
I will crumble if not handled gently
& I can only hide the evidence of
erosion for so long
which means every tract you cut
through
my wildernesswill not grow over
and leave no trace of your passing.
As footfalls flatten the
forest floor,
from a
bird’s eye view, it’s clear to see
how many times
you’ve trampled me.
Papa, we shall never have peace
No, nor will we weather the storm.