Necessary lamentations with a maker

 

old books say     man takes after father

my floppy ears     corroborate axiom

your phone voice     evokes porous elegy

hard to drink    or eat away I float on canopy

thin film of rage     on withering leaves

touching lips in prayer     head in supplication

 

my body hurt    from skirmishes with ghosts 

imbibing bruises like breath     nursing till they become air

I pine     for density in silence

to compensate     the things you never said

the damn beauty of unspokenness     I accepted as God 

all my life     you voiced from world beneath 

a word or two     my eyes flung at rippling pool

became reflection’s sentience      your spitting image shook

 

I’m guilty of wanting me     to look less like you

I’m guilty of reconstructing     pasts for education   

the want to begin again 

is delighting     in life’s promise

so I’ll stay adamant     son for hunger’s sake

remember the wind chime    a tickling so divine

muted porch     us sitting on jute-roped summer cot 

passage of evening breeze     widening jaws to smile

reminding us to laugh     briefly exhale