X.
“Another winter”
Another winter.
Snow is first beautiful, then bitter.
Can I survive
my mind’s deep dive?
I’m afraid
of the pain
flowing out of me,
it’s neverending
it starts
and I am unable to stop,
hardly human anymore
on the dirt floor
all day
I kneel and pray
for deliverance
a second chance
to be again the child
who smiles
witlessly innocent
at the world of his senses
buoying him up.
I know this is too much
to ask for
Lord.
Ascetic is my soul—
you taught me this well.
Sexton: one who decides
on the season of sacrifice,
cakes of frost
weaving the leaves with pearl emboss
but why, God, have you given
this burden
to me?
I am weak
I understand no life
is without joy, without strife
I don’t understand you.
I don’t understand you
You who knows I cannot speak
of anything that came to be.
Who knows I am relentlessly
afflicted by these memories.
Who knows betrayal happens
with kisses in gardens.
You don’t know the shame I carry
for that I wanted you to touch me
You don’t know how vulnerable it is
to reach
across this dark breach
of blinding light
as though there were more to bind
than divide
Why won’t you speak?
I hate that I keep these
hopes pressed to my chest
as though they were precious
You are perhaps gone already
having wanted only
images of your likeness
to ease the loneliness,
your son the bond between you and
the earth
but you won’t be my death.
I am the more powerful
I can do evil
You dare proclaim my sinful nature
when it is I, not you, who must suffer
all the endless posturing, all the kneeling
up and down,
fidelity and piety stamped across
my brow
That’s what your religion is—
a form of blindness
How can I know you then?
Is this the great love you pretend
and if you truly love me
do you suffer for me?
Is any father worth it
to worship?
Is any father
even there?
If I forgave Him
would paradise come?
In life one speaks like this only once,
usually hysterically but I have my wits
You will hear me
and I will see
on your face the small flickering
of consciousness shifting
and then my mind
will be like the stained glass at noontime
as it lets through colored sunlight
exactly as its maker designed.
Sympathies to you, Creator—
you had no clue you made the monster
who would turn its heart on its father.
…
Andrew Tye is from a town named Temple. He believes all humans are poets. He performs his forthcoming book My Son as a one-man show in NYC. He aims to share the book and the show with national audiences.