A Long Poem on My Father: Who Was Truly also a "Mother" in That Same Compound-Word Sense As My Mother!

 

GOOD OL’ DADDY,

DADDY DEAREST!

 

I finally got my father

to break down and talk

to my psychotherapist

of the early Nineteen-

Nineties—

which he did, by a long-

distance phone call from

Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to

Indianapolis.  And in ten

minutes of chatting, he made

quite an impression on the

psychotherapist.  As the

psychotherapist related the

conversation to me, after

ten minutes’ worth of talking

to my father, he’d concluded

that my father was—

“just an asshole out to vindicate

himself,” “an ignorant fascist,” and

“a tyrant and a bully”!  Which is

really making an impression!

 

Ah, but my father had one

redeeming quality:

he loved God all the way

down to his asshole and below!

Yes, he was so upset when I

left the Catholic Church and

became an atheist; as he once

told me, he’d preferred I be a

Unitarian, at least.  Just believe

in God, any ol’ god!  But

believe!

 

He also didn’t think much of

my collegiate Marxism and

left political radicalism, and

had a very simple explanation

for why I’d become such: 

I’d been “duped by communists,”

simple as that.  Yes, I,

National Merit I, 130+ IQ

I, scholarship I, had simply

been so stupid and naïve

as to be duped by unsavory

foreign agents of an alien,

un-American ideology. 

All there was to it!  End

of discussion.

 

When I was in eighth

grade, and my parents

were driving me to the

eighth-grade graduation

picnic, I casually remarked

that I was a “nonconformist.”

That one word set my father

afire with rage, moving him

to scream at me at the top of

his lungs for a good fifteen

minutes on how I had to

conform!  For fifteen minutes he

went on in raging anger,

without respite—and

needless to say, not tolerating me

to say a word back to him ever. 

(I never ever was allowed to say

anything back to either of my parents

when they went off in fifteen-minute

rages against me—which was

frequently, and which came out of

nowhere.)  So there!  I had been told! 

Conform—or else!  A very rare moral

values lesson from my father!  (He

usually turned all morals, values,

education over to the good nuns and

priests of the Catholic school system. 

In fact, he usually didn’t talk to me,

period.  And when he did, it was

usually to scream at, rather than talk

to, me.)

 

But, lest we forget his one redeeming

trait—my father loved God all the way

down to his asshole and below!  (Jee-zus

Christ—could I be dripping sarcasm

here??  Me?  Little ol’ me?!!)

Then, when I didn’t graduate

from college as originally planned—

but dropped out, returning to college

(a different one) several years later,

only to leave campus and return

“home” (truly deserving of quotation

marks in this case) with Incompletes

hanging over my head—he would

rage, along with my mother, “You’ll

never graduate!  All that money we

wasted!”  But then, when I made up

the Incompletes, sent the work in, and

did graduate—not a peep!  Not even a

simple “Congratulations.  You did it—

as you said you would.  We were wrong,

of course.”  No, it was not at all there

for either of my parents to ever admit

they were wrong.

 

But let us not forget or overlook—

both my parents loved God all the

way down to their assholes and below!

Surely, that counts for something,

doesn’t it?!!

 

Then, I even got a job that required

my new college degree—in Indianapolis,

as a statistician with the State of

Indiana, which lasted all of six months,

and left me broke and without prospects.

(I must admit, taking the job for all the

wrong reasons—away from my parents,

in a strange, new, actually big—or so I

thought—city, I could now freely drink

the indulgent, continual way I wanted to,

without interruption!)   I now had a new,

unexpected choice to make, and I made it—

I stayed on in Indianapolis penniless and

without prospects rather than crawl “home”

to my parents like a whipped dog, tail tucked

between my legs.  Better to starve with a

modicum of dignity that to eat in shame and

self-disgust.  As a heroine of the Spanish

Civil War put it, “Better to die on one’s feet

than to live on one’s knees.”

 

Yes, I took Robert Frost’s “road less

traveled”—and it did make “all the

difference”!  Made me what I am

today:  poet, writer, stand-up comedian,

while also being a worker, blue-collar

worker much of the time, but for a decade,

white-collar test-scorer using my college

degree—but always, standing on my feet,

never crawling on my knees!  Yes, it was

rough, rougher than I ever imagined it would

be.  But I bore the cost—and today,

“sexist” as it may seem, am a man, proudly

a man, not merely a boy in an adult’s

body!

 

Ah, but am I not being too harsh on

my parents, especially here, my father?

After all, he did, up to the day he died,

love God all the way down to his asshole

and below!  Surely, there’s some

redemption in that?  If there is, would

someone please tell me what it is,

and where it can be found?!!