I have long since learned the therapeutic nature of poetry. If I was in a good mood, I wrote stories. If I was hurt or upset or angry, I would write poetry. Poetry helped to express the feelings in a way that didn’t hurt anyone. Teenage angst equals lots and lots of poetry. If I tried to write stories while in a bad mood, I usually ended up hurting a key character and would have to go back to the editing stage (read that as “chopping block”) just to salvage whatever disaster I had created in the midst of my grumpiness. Poetry did better when fueled by hurt. Go figure. Many times, my poetry was inspired by my overactive imagination that refused to sleep when I did, aka dreams and nightmares.
The poem “Bloodline” is from a nightmare that left me sobbing and unable to breathe when I awoke. Like many of my dreams around that time, it was relevant to the events in my life. My rich imagination had quite a lot to work with, I assure you. When I was 21 and my son was only two weeks old, I was pulled into court for three days to testify against the crimes of my father. I told of my experiences in truth, and as a result, my father disowned me when he took the stand. However I doubt the legal binding of what he said, his public renouncement of me was particularly brutal, especially because I had no choice but to testify.
After the trial had ended and my father’s fate was sealed, the dreams that plagued me were not of the trial itself, nor of the crimes that placed him there. Instead, they were of him trying by every means possible and impossible to separate us so completely that there would never be any hope of reconciliation. For many years and with many people he formed the bars behind which he sat for a very long time. No matter how deeply I wish that things could be different, this is yet another set of circumstances that do not happen to fall within the realm of my control.
Bloodline
Many a night
I’ve laid awake in thought
Of you;
In your squalid solitude.
I can see in my mind’s eye
The vampires you place
To face me
In your attempt
To let them suck your blood
From mine.
However picky they may be,
My veins contain the mixture
That poisons them
And swells their tongues,
And they defer their task
For want of sweeter wine.
I envision you
Heaving and hacking
At the threads that connect us
With your axe
Built from hurt,
But I sense nonetheless
That your outward actions
Are not the reflections
Of what lies within.
I see you madly cut by day
And weep in the cover of night
Over what you sought to destroy.
You are the father
Of the daughter
Who faces you now.
You called me liar,
I can forgive;
You disowned me,
I can forget;
Because no filter
Can be fashioned
Whose face is so fine
As to sift your blood
From mine.
I did not create your vice;
I do not condone it,
But you join us
On your list of victims.
Truth to tell,
You were the first of us,
And the chance is better
Than remote
That you will be the last.
The visions disturb me.
I see you pensive,
A myriad of emotions
From day to day,
Pent in your mind
Like caged rats
Gnawing on the bars
Of the edges
Of your mind.
A day of vengeance vows,
Another of disparity,
Yet another of remorse,
And no soul on the outside of your mind
Would ever know.
The day they took you,
I could not stop the tears.
The others hugged and smiled,
Justice had been done, says they.
But in justice,
We placed judgment,
And for a man with
Unbelief in fate,
We chose it for you
And made it stick.
It is not guilt
That made me cry,
For it was only in truth I spoke.
It was not for power of control,
Nor by regret or fear
That caused my grief,
But the thought of so long,
My entire lifetime away,
Before your fate
Could be returned
To your hands.
The sorrow still clings.
Your grandson will not know you
Until he is of age
To make a great-grandfather
Out of the man you are right now.
I am unable
To strain you from my life.
The heart that pumps in me
Does not discriminate
On the basis of whose life
Contributed to my own.
I am the continuation,
And the blood I bear
Is more significant
Than the words you speak.
It may as well be steel
Against dust—
Irrevocable, even in death.
You are the father
Of the daughter
Who faces you now.