There I was -
A budding slouch of a child.
Cough drop breath and a dandelion
Nose altogether worthy and beautiful and loved and damned
Because I had that haunting figure: the muse, the Freudian love, the Fathers
That abused the Mothers -
That saw love as futile and hopeless,
Altogether uninterested and indifferent to the feminine touch and the honey sweet kisses and the cough drop breath.
How many times can a man be unfaithful?
Countless, as the one hundred women lay in your bed.
I am a feminist because of my Fathers.
Their lust for women has made me into a priest,
Into a helper,
A consolidator,
A woman to remind the collection of women that even though their sex is just one in one hundred,
They will always be memorable to me.
My Fathers,
Uninterested,
Indifferent to the sways of change and humidity and humanity,
Resting slightly on the San Diego beaches and reminiscing on their fraternity days and young women and Wow!
Pushing sixty now, Dad,
Did it matter that you never shared your heart?
It does not matter because I can see my Fathers:
Incarcerated,
Lonely, sex addicted, and avoidant havens unto their own.
No recesses here, only long lunch breaks and throwing up all the ghosts of the women who were the other.
So I speak for these women.
I atone for my sins by speaking to the men who say women are needy creatures,
Succulent beings ready to lap up any kind of affection and affliction.
Fathers, run to your Mothers.
Forgive them.
I am here,
Like a ghost of a woman, a shell.
Forget the fucking, forget the drugs, forget your past life,
Fathers.
I am my own Father. I am my own.
