The Pest (a poem)

The Pest


Father me not, for whoever you were, you didn’t anyway
And I am happy just with that…

And I have a man, who claims to be my son, Mike,
And today there is doubt.
Today I see a fiend between us: me, and him.
They (he and his wife) both lurk in the wings
She wants something, not sure what, but she’s
Pushing him to get it…!

Now I am sixty-years old, time has come
And gone, and look where time has brought us.
A few days ago, his wife wrote, she’s been a
Knife to my throat, waiting for me to
choke, lay in my grave, dead as a washed
up, rag…she is like a toy ship
Sailing around my galley, calling out:
“Your son wants to talk to you (but he
Doesn’t ask, it is she…),
Mend fences,” but there were never fences
To mend, I never made them, and he, he
Never agreed to paint them, had I made them.
We didn’t do a thing together.

So much she doesn’t know, he was a drunk
And I helped him, like a bum on a road, and
I helped him, gave him a fin one day, and
A few other days, always begging, begging,
All he ever had to say was: I want more.
And his wife is the bee, wish they were like
My father, and just leave me alone…

Mike has for 41-years, and all of a sudden,
he wants to cuddle, as if I was his teddy bear,
An once of me, is not for sale, not an once,
and perhaps all the juices left, in me he’d like
to cut out, old dead things let them lay where
they are, we were never a thing.

You were a young fox, hiding under your booze
Like mole, dim, in a hole, I tried to befriend you,
and you Said, “Where is my gift for my birthday,”
and not once did you call me father, give me gifts,
You were like salt on a wound, a young pest.

To appear again and say, ‘Here I am!’ as if
You were an archangel, and a special gift to me,
Take your wife, and her broomstick, and knife,
And let me live my life, my final days, without
A stranger in my way…stranger, stranger,
Away, away, away, go away…far away.

#2277 (2-18-2008)