TheBanyanTree: Inheritance

[LLDeMerlè]

		Our craziness comes 
		from our father’s side
		He, himself is not crazy
		though, one has to wonder 
		about a man 
		who hates his child, yet
		loves the children of others
		who treated his wife like a dog-slave 
		who runs from home to play with guns and rods 
		for months at a time while she is left with the burdens:
		the business, the children and that bottle of wine for
company 
		as she plans her separate vacations and eventually laments
		elusive retirement
		but death came first

		No, he’s probably only deluded
		says he is an easy-going guy while those fearful 
		or courting approval tiptoe by him hoping he doesn’t notice 
		a flaw they haven’t reconciled with, yet
		I threw my head back and laughed at this.  
		It came all the way  from my knees, gathered wind 
		in my belly and forced itself through the narrows
		before my mouth let it pass.  
		His eyes widened, his back straightened and his storytelling

		was momentarily suspended between fantasy and bewilderment.

		Stull, our craziness comes from him.  
		We are born romantics with a fistful of 
		fancifulness thrown at us.  
		What sticks runs wild and unfettered 
		and then so do the stories.  
		Realities marry fantasies and run companions off 
		in exhaustion while they recoil at the sounds of their names

		Some get disturbed and take a hard turn 
		against the wind
		Convoluted
		they demand complete loyalty 
		as they name the ones they hate 
		with their own sins 
		When that fails to satisfy the black hole 
		in their middles, Vengeance at nothing 
		and everything crafts violent works,
		works of fiction, my brother calls it.  
		They protect their private worlds where 
		truth and lies look each other in the eye 
		and melt 

		Some get persuaded 
		by the way of the world
		some by books, by God, to step out 
		of the narcissistic harness rubbing 
		our ankles raw. 
		 It don’t come easy, but 
		I gnawed mine off, so constant 
		was the panic, haunting, hunting and 
		wrangling me, sometimes scoring a win 
		as I stood in my kitchen staring 
		at the back door, nearly catatonic as voices 
		of children floated through the house, around my 
		ears, colliding with the voices in my head
		strengthening the one in my heart which said
		Don’t let them in, those demons behind the door, the ones 
		I flung out when they couldn’t mind their manners and tried 
		to claim my commitment-phobe soul.    
		They close in behind it, again, as I exorcise another and
they wrap 
		their black fingers around the edges of the opening door,
putting their shoulders 
		against it in as I fling another over their heads, bowed in
their labor.  

		Never an opportunity missed, the witless kept watch at the
door, but 
		only a couple of emaciated ones remain, now:  Doubt
.Fear.  
		They no longer have the strength to storm the door, but only
gather it 
		if I go out and sit on the stoop with them where they suck
their nourishment 
		from whatever I offer them of myself


		LLDeMerle