melissaahowells
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Papa you're a ghost-voice in my head
the stern task master I can't quite please Papa you're the man in the high tower you're the one banging the gavel you're the one who's known all the worst devils but from your demonizing I can't yet seem to be freed Papa you had your false friends and you made your false enemies Papa you had your glamor and your dirt naps there were rarely many in-betweens you were the sometime focus of my nightmares you were a distant Father dream unrealized a human mirage isn't it surprising how I wish it'd been better for you and that I was your first favorite dish sad how I saw the silver glimmer in your red eyes the shining that you might've been my long lost sweet surprise that never came to complete fruition where were you missing on those late nights hanging out in dark dingy bar rooms in small one horse towns it was your way to whittle yourself down from the possibility of any great height why didn't you have any ideas about who you were or where you belonged when you returned, you saw that you'd been forgotten and that we were better off gone how sad how misbegotten Papa you taught me all the ways not to live inside my hopes were rotten yet towards your end when you were the weaker one when you were nearly in the ground only then were you a Father the real person I needed around all along the missing Father to the loser in me sifting out the last morsels of your life the very last you had to sieve you had been the man so long the one who'd never been around the one I looked like Papa yes you lost me and I lost you and I never got you back it was only until the devil was completely weakened that the angel in you came on back Papa I wish you had always been my Father I wish you had been my friend I wish it hadn't taken so long to happen I wish we'd known each other better that we weren't such fragile strangers in the end //////////////////////////////////////////////// legal copyright for this poem/work and also for this writer Melissa A. Howells and also for this legally copyrighted site title Meloo Straight From Her Tilt-a-World re-edited for impact and clarification 9:51 AM PST /September 24, 2017 2:40pm Pacific Standard Time, written far from the prairie of my youth...for my Father, I love him still August 27, 2017....it would've been nearly the 60th anniversary had they stayed married...but that's only possible in my weird and distant twilight imagination of my parents marriage... Vote for this poem |
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