Inheritance - Edit

[RiverNotch]

Inheritance

Your command of meter shines here. I noticed the prosody only to the extent that each line read with the same length of time -- but the whole rhythm felt natural, conversational, which I think is the proper function of IP. "Ted" made me think of Ted Hughes, what with me currently immersed in Plath, and, in relation to that, the popular response (but not mine) seeming to be to demonize him; while "Gerald" reminded me of Geralt of Rivia, ie The Witcher series, a Polish sword-and-sorcery series of stories whose book forms (the originals) I don't care enough to read, and whose video game forms I really want to play.

When he was five young Gerald’s father spanked
him angrily for playing near the edge, "angrily" doesn't feel like the right rhythm-filler, here. I feel like the poem should put a bit more emphasis on the tension between what some would call a history of violence and what others would call a simple lack of discipline, such that the identity of Gerald's father should be a mystery -- ie, that Gerald doesn't necessarily know if his father was ever more than neutral, and the element abuse appears only when Gerald either recalls or invents all those little details with his shrink. Well, that, and the fact that "angrily" just doesn't sound right.
tormenting animals, and most of all
for toying with himself.  Young Gerald learned The alliteration between "tormenting" and "toying" is nice, but it puts an undue emphasis, I think, on the words themselves, rather than their uses -- that is, with the alliteration, "tormenting" just seems like a tangent from "playing" and "toying", and I don't think it's a particularly common experience for children to torment animals. Perhaps a less alliterative euphemism, to match up with this line's innuendo.
what things were right and wrong, and soon forgot
those loving pains and terrors that had taught Concerning said tension between abuse and discipline, "loving pains and terrors" also feels rather inappropriate, in that I would prefer something less livid than "terrors" -- and yet, on second thought, the contrast between "loving pains" and "terrors" is appropriate, especially since the next four lines are where the tension is developed with the relatively vivid show of violence, so I suppose this is sort of a non-issue.
him which was which.  At thirty-three his shrink
informed him that his fear of heights was caused I would like this better if "fear of heights" was replaced by a more alien problem, or perhaps a more Freudian -- "playing near the edge" loses its power for me when made this literal.
by rage and anger, violent abuse
his father had inflicted on a son
he hated.  Gerald took it all to heart
and never punished his son Ted except "punished his son Ted except" sort of jams in the tongue, for me, although I guess that lack of smoothness fits the build up to the piece's (delightfully) janky resolution.
with smiling time-outs.  No-one could explain
why Ted turned out sadistic and depraved,
thrill-seeking and amoral - unafraid So yeah, the sensationalized Ted Hughes, or the amoral spirit (so I've heard) of much of The Witcher series -- however, not sensational enough, I think. At this point I would expect a more specific return to the euphemisms of the first few lines, especially with "by rage and anger, violent abuse / his father had inflicted on a son / he hated." is about as abstract as this line, only with those lines being more effective, since they're the first real shot, both in the poem's native form and according to the edits I'm suggesting, of violence (*----and also, making those lines about Gerald's father's violence vague compared to this enhance the unreliability of recollection, which as you earlier noted and as I later will consider is a part of your intention with this piece; I think the poem's setting is implied to contain a still living Gerald watching over his son, such that what he sees in Ted is more current observation than the accessing of memory). Perhaps a return to the image of "tormenting animals", but this time with a more specific sort of torment, and a more specific sort of animal -- and with the language being equally euphemistic, such that the torment could be interpreted as something immoral only according to Gerald's outdated values.
of playing near the edge.  Old Gerald thought
it had to be inherited somehow -
Ted’s grandfather, as he recalled, was bad. Ending the verse on "somehow", a weak word, and "bad", a bland word, really enforces that jankiness, which as I have noted is delightful -- it keeps in the reader's mind how the tension is unresolved. Of course, I could be wrong, and your emphasis here may be less about that tension, and more something autobiographical, although reading your spoiler'd explanation of yourself, I guess I'm about right. To summarize, if you're gonna criticize in this piece both the nature of "recovered memory" and "Spockian permissive child-rearing", I think, for the first six lines, you really have to contain any traces of abuse, make it so that, when Gerald's childhood is described, the father is a nonentity, so that the spanking filtered only by the reader's perception of what discipline is, and Gerald's sins are never particularly good nor bad; and for the last six lines, make Ted's violence both more vivid, to make that section less weak compared to the equally vague yet far more effective introduction of violence in the middle, and more a mere consequence of modernity, so that it emphasizes Gerald's being "old", ie Gerald's recollection being unreliable, or Gerald further returning to the image of his father. Otherwise, lovely work.