[8269]
i've cast deeper shadows than this,
longer & leaner
as they muscled in the sun
and moved like echos behind me,
like children
begging to be invited along,
inching behind
in quiet need
of recognition.
that strange, curling urge has hit me,
the need
to excavate,
to dig my fingernails hard
into the soil I've laid
for my wispy roots to stretch.
i've regressed again-
eager in my disease of need
to know Daddy,
to cognize the man
of him,
before the seven seeds
he sowed
sprung forth & became his years,
before the trauma
became his profession.
I want the hazy-hot truth
of his youth,
the gun sizzling
heavy in his hand
after too much
waiting
& uncertainty-
In that defoliated tangle
of Jungle & mud,
Who had entered his
dust-heavy mind?
A girl, of course,
his mother perhaps,
nothing of the future
that followed
at 1064 Thompson Drive-
how could he have known
that such length
of life
lay before him-
of seven screaming
children
who bled him dry-
like the seven
bullets he took,
screaming
like a child,
bleeding
in the dry
heat,
baking like pie
beneath the
heavy sore
of sun heaving
in the sky.