"Something to do with violence a long way back
and wrong rewards and arrogant eternity"
(Phillip Larkin)
***
A blood-letting of sorts
heralded your first day here.
Prehistoric beast that you seemed in your fear.
***
Fear that needed, needs still, a little more
than a kick in the teeth and three words to heal.
***
Confusion inevitably ensued,
and the twisted fears turn us all inside-out,
or rather, they skew our futures with incessant demands,
for a placation we may never fully discover.
***
OK think! (you were warned early on)
Come on, on your feet......I lie.
More like:
You bas-havethis-fuckyou-hateyou-
loveme-alllovewefuckinghateall
....loveyouson.
***
Though the last three words,
came so much later than you ever deserved.
***
Hardly surprising the confusion never dissipated,
but mutated,
in your sense of what it was you might allow yourself to become.
I suppose that's enough of that, a little of what I can imagine.
***
But what I am trying to say is that,
perhaps I can hold fast enough to make an attempt,
(full-hearted and half-arsed as it may be -
as most things are condemned to be)
an attempt to retract from blame and recrimination,
to slow the continual clockwork of hurt
and ask something simple.
***
Can we try and make sense of it as Father and Son?
***
Though you can never have your Dad back,
to ask some questions or talk,
and I don't expect miracles
-us holding hands as we walk
into a bright new dawn-
***
Can we just try
to use both our heads,
to recover some reasons
for the blood-letting of sorts,
that permeates both our lives
and which leaves us with words to try and heal
reality as we've known it,
as we approach it...