11-29-2016, 08:53 AM
Forgive me for I’ve sinned.
I have become my mad aunt Anastasia.
I have become the Botox woman with the fish mouth.
I am the surplus confusion of my mother,
the left-overs of uncle Tommy –
sous chef and demon lover,
the aftershave of my father, and his father before him.
Forgive me, O Holiest
for I am as solid as particleboard and cinder-block.
I am the speedometer in an old mans head,
a tale in an Aesop fable.
He was always a strange child.
We taught him to work with his hands,
to craft useful items like tables and chairs,
yet he would go to the roof at midday
and jump off as if he could fly.
Of course he fell like a stone, but
here’s the thing, he always seemed to land gently,
as if, at the last moment, he could defy gravity.
Joseph thought him possessed,
but I knew that he was simply being
among others,
his uncle and aunt,
the leper who lives in the Potters Field,
he who chews the moist bones of the newly dead –
a holy man.
Forgive me for I have omitted,
and not admitted. Let this, my confession,
not add to the cacophony.
We have rejected the belly of your whale.
We have spurned the sea and choke now
in a foreign place.
We have become shadows on a hospital wall;
no one is sick here, no one is well;
dementia and the Botox-cart our only exit.
In our winter cave, Androcles stares at me hungrily.
Ever since the thorn thing, there has been famine.
Poor mangy lion that I have become,
I wish I had consumed him that day.
My belly aches like a thorn in my vitals.
I can tell he feels the same.
We can taste each others secreted marrows.
Even as we dream we stare at each other,
lick dream lips. Forgive us
for what we must become.
I have become my mad aunt Anastasia.
I have become the Botox woman with the fish mouth.
I am the surplus confusion of my mother,
the left-overs of uncle Tommy –
sous chef and demon lover,
the aftershave of my father, and his father before him.
Forgive me, O Holiest
for I am as solid as particleboard and cinder-block.
I am the speedometer in an old mans head,
a tale in an Aesop fable.
He was always a strange child.
We taught him to work with his hands,
to craft useful items like tables and chairs,
yet he would go to the roof at midday
and jump off as if he could fly.
Of course he fell like a stone, but
here’s the thing, he always seemed to land gently,
as if, at the last moment, he could defy gravity.
Joseph thought him possessed,
but I knew that he was simply being
among others,
his uncle and aunt,
the leper who lives in the Potters Field,
he who chews the moist bones of the newly dead –
a holy man.
Forgive me for I have omitted,
and not admitted. Let this, my confession,
not add to the cacophony.
We have rejected the belly of your whale.
We have spurned the sea and choke now
in a foreign place.
We have become shadows on a hospital wall;
no one is sick here, no one is well;
dementia and the Botox-cart our only exit.
In our winter cave, Androcles stares at me hungrily.
Ever since the thorn thing, there has been famine.
Poor mangy lion that I have become,
I wish I had consumed him that day.
My belly aches like a thorn in my vitals.
I can tell he feels the same.
We can taste each others secreted marrows.
Even as we dream we stare at each other,
lick dream lips. Forgive us
for what we must become.