Daddy

You never seemed to love me much when I was just a kid,
Drowned in drink, uncomfortably numb -
You never took much notice of the times I’d go and come -
It hardly seemed to matter what I did.

You never seemed to care when Mommy’d beat me with a belt,
And caved in when she had you beat me too -
And though you looked despondent - when you finally were through,
You still seemed unconcerned with how I felt.

You watched her go ballistic when a glass of milk was spilt -
Looked away, or poured yourself some gin,
As if you were unconscious of the hell that we were in,
Too numbed by booze to feel any guilt.

We watched your marriage on that sexless king-size bed unfold,
Boob tube on, exchanging not a word -
And you were just an actor in this play of the absurd -
A broken man, who did as he was told.

Later, when you died, I found some letters you had written,
Quite different from the ones that you wrote Mother -
Dripping wet with passions that she must have made you smother,
’Twas clear how deeply you had once been smitten 

In ways completely absent in the letters to your wife,
Of which I had not had the faintest notion -
The ones to “Mim” were torpid and devoid of all emotion,
Containing not the faintest sign of life.

In this we were the same, although I folded much, much later -
Our judgment was impaired, our wills were frozen -
Driven by unconscious urges, both of us had chosen
To pair off with a world-class perpetrator.

You opted to divorce her after thirty years of hell,
And seemed to come alive there for a while -
I believed you when you said you loved me, how it made me smile!
You meant it, too, as far as I could tell.

Once I’d been incarcerated by this vile bitch,
I watched you slowly suicide with booze -
If only you had warned me! If you’d recognized the ruse!
But neither you nor I saw through this witch,

Whose goal was to disable me and drain my vital force,
The very things that Mother did to you -
But unlike you, the sad result was once that she was through,
I was left too weak to seek divorce.

I loved you so much, Daddy - when I saw your tragic fate,
I know now that I tried to bond with you
By forfeiting my life to emulate what you’d gone through -
A revelation granted me too late.

Pondering our wasted lives, I clutch my head and cry -
There’s nothing left for me, except to die.