Excommunicado: (Christ! Not) Another Love Poem
It’s true – the world is
a mediocre place, and
you are too big-hearted
for it. Your eyes, so large
and blue and filled to the forehead
with expectations others
haven’t the will
to fulfill, look upon us all
scampering as we do
over this thin crust
of an old planet – whose driving force
is more akin to the creation
that falls from your finger tips
like a welcome rain
than the crumbling skyscrapers
and endless cracking interstates
our long forgotten antecedents
gambled their souls on (and lost).
You look upon us,
the devoured, the dead,
looking for another soul
not quite excommunicated
who would build something
so magnificent
that Art could not describe it,
that Heaven would burn envious of it.
Watching you struggle daily
makes me ache because
(excommunicated as I am)
I understand
there are so few options
for the one in one billion
born with a heart that beats
as large and as long and as loud
as yours.
Things that Remain (For Stella)
You are too old now
to believe the fairy tales
you heard as an infant
and the world
would not let you believe them
anyway, and your mother
would throw them out
with yesterday’s trash
like all childhood memories
are eventually ignored, discarded,
and forgotten. I am not,
I know, the conventional father,
the doting father who walks in the door
before supper and who
is there to explain
why your last name is different
from your mother’s
(or why it matters)
and why those odd emotional turns you have
are completely normal
and why
you should hold onto
the privacy of your thoughts
with all you have (because
that is all anybody will have.)
I don’t remember the age you were
when I realized you were a stranger;
it was a terrible and glorious day
because the little that’s in me
that passes for real fatherhood
mourned the loss;
but the rest of me was excited
at the new person
I desperately wanted to know.
The only problem then was
(as usual)
I didn’t know how to begin.
Maybe we’re all born strangers
and it’s only that passing physical connection
that deludes fathers into believing
we understand our children. Maybe that mixture
of love and happiness and sadness I felt
the first time I held you
should’ve been some indicator
of what was to come – but
I was too overcome
with that sensation
that there was now
in the world
another human being
who might grow
to see her greatness
in that flash of insight
most people mistake
for a day dream.
Shadow Puppets
What we see when we turn out the lights
are the shadows of our own souls
looking back at us, wanting to know
if we will ever catch up with them, or
if we have fallen behind for good. It happens
when we are children: we fall say our prayers
and fall asleep one night still full
of dreams and the energy that (reportedly)
created the universe and stars and suns and planets
and all the basic elements. We fall asleep and
we fall behind and the dreams suddenly change
and we are so busy chasing them
that we do not notice. As we age
the shadows linger, hoping (as all children do)
that we will return
that we will find ourselves
and reunite ourselves
with the selves we know is missing
but don’t have the sense
to go in searching for. Gradually,
our dreams
take different turns,
adult turns; the scientists say
our dreams manifest our fears
and allow us to play out scenarios
safely without rocking the boat
or pissing off the office manager
who will certainly report us
who will certainly call us
the dirtiest of names:
insubordinate, immature, unqualified, and
(gasp!) not company material.
If that happens, then
all we will have left are
empty midnight emissions
and creditors calling
who will call us names
and tell us we are unworthy
of the American Dream;
though they, too, have forgotten all the dreams
worth having and will not admit
the one they are selling
is one that never existed. Their shadows
haunt them too, but they’re too busy to notice
while you
are lying in bed the following morning
grasping at a memory,
the name of which
is on the tip of your tongue
and whose face
is encased in the dried tears
staining your dirty pillow.
