papa was a rollin stone
he laid his hat in our home often a mere 68 yrs.
at checkout he spoke a mythopoeic language of
sports horses +jazz he loved children too
though a pallid cousin accused him of abandoning
her young daughter a dark faerie if there ever was one
in a hot car on a broiling day
he wouldn’t treat his dog that way pallid cousin probably
wanted to bone him he had a kind of animal magnetism
rarely seen outside of the animal kingdom
on days when he went all Stanley Kowalski we children hid once
mother called the cops he’d given the old heave ho to her luggage
giant trunks sailing into the ravine below our house (not Louis Vuitton)
where did she think she was going?! to Montreal +the best Chinese food
in Canada also to her mother’s crowded walk-up where years earlier a
brother had been infested with whitefish larvae as he slept on an iron cot
we were poor mother proudly said
our father could sit on a turquoise couch with silver threads for hours
petting his outsized dogs + midsized sons (e tu brute) speaking in sports
tongues while young gladiators on tv lay motionless +bashed-head
personally i found these Sunday rituals interminable i preferred my grail
holier though now a days i sit tv bound watching the NBA where young
zillionaires unfresh from college wear zero protection +Prada sweats
breaking jaws bones +noses against elbows +hardwood floors at night
they cry for their mamas +huddle in the foetal position in $40 million
mansions one brother assures me they are too rich to love
our father’s love was a mysterious thing he never said i love you but
he didn’t have to it was understood +fierce he would tear the face off
of anyone who hurt us
so i didn’t tell him about the teacher
who sat me on his hard lap at 11
daddy would be in prison
__
..they were boys in men’s bodies doing what we all want to do..
..they were boys then not mercenaries with agents..when one loses
the boy something dies forever.. (James Hollis Jungian Analyst 2009)
Winter 2023
songanddancegirl 