Where did you find the silk thread you used to
Bind me together?
I saw you down digging in the graveyard dirt,
Father, I saw you there past late,
When only the homeless and the drunks
Weren't yet asleep---
You had a shovel and a pair of forceps,
Rusted antiques.
Rust or blood, or both, maybe.
You were removing stitches and caching
The thread. Saving it for me, to save me,
Isn't that right?

Where did you find the sinews, the ligaments,
The feathery white tendons that move my
Baby muscles here and there?
Are they catgut strings plucked from
Your banjo, father?
Or are they the braided hair of women,
The ones who followed your scent
Like coonhounds, rolled in it,
And then expired,
Leaving only a babyshower
Gift behind?

Where did you find the mess of pink
Inside my head, father?
The assistant man says it belonged to someone else,
before. Said he was a murderer, said he hung low
In the gallows all day before they cut him down
And cut it out.
For science, he said.
Is that why it's all twisted up,
Gray matter white matter matted
Synapses beginning and ending nowhere,
Ending in void?

Glitch
Jerk, awake.
I'm awake now, father.
Why did you run?

And where did you find the heaviness
That's weighing me down-
rocks from the bottom of the river,
Anchors from old fishing boats,
Engines from antique cars loaded
Onto my back because you
Couldn't part with them for anyone
But me
You said I'm your son.
I'm your inheritance.
Biology gives you a right to me
Somehow.
Isn't that right?
Isn't it?

Gray matter white matter matted,
A hole in my gut where the sinews
Snapped, sitting by the cottage
While the blind old man tells
Stories, afraid to approach-
I really hate you.
Yes, I think I really do.
The classics taught me to speak,
The classics and the man teaching
The exiled Arabian girl,
And now I have the words

You shouldn't ever hurt a half-formed thing
Everyone does anyway, I see that clear-
I see how we cut lambs into chops
And calves into veal-
But you grew me too big
Too fast, and now I feel much too old father,
Much too old for my child's adult's body

I do not yearn for you.
I used to, I admit.
I killed a few people because you made me.
Because you made me so angry, father.
And I don't grieve for you, dying
Old and bitter aboard a ship
Bound for the northest north
Where snow makes everything
Look new and ancient.
I mean, sure, I feel a bit of pity.
I wish it had ended differently;
You had so much potential.
But I can't feel much besides
An echo because you chose this,
Father, you chose again and again
And again-

And I'm not angry anymore, either.
I got all that out when I strangled your
Brother in the meadow,
Amongst the laughing faces of poppies.
When I gouged your bride
Because you first disassembled mine.
I'm beyond anger, moved into
A place of wistful resignation.
This is this, that is that,
This is what it has to be like-

I do not ache for you-
Your greatness is long since smoke-
But I do ache.
Softly, gently, I ache.
Father, I ache because
I'll never, for as long as I walk
This plane, be rid of you.

You cut me from pieces of cadaver
And iron, animated me by the
Blessing of a thunder storm,
Laughed to see me born
Yet spent years watching me
Die-

You left a stain upon my chest,
Writing only a few words I
Can read.
Will read.
You gave me your
Old knotted threads
And made them my own,
My own hands tangled in
The yarn, unable to unclasp-

You made me, and I can't
Undo it, not by living,
Not by dying.
It is written in stone, father,
In the headstone you'll soon
Be lying under.
You made me, you see.
I trace my story far enough back,
Back from London and the Alps and
Even the hole by the cottage,
Back and back and back,
And I find us joined at the hip.
Shared blood flow,
A cut, bleeding never entirely
Staunched.

Oh, I know where the silk thread came from.
I know where you got my pickled brain,
My sheets of wrinkled, tattooed skin.
And I know that you probably think
I'm the monster-

But father, all of my ugliness
Comes from you.
You made me, remember?