tell me how not to love him and I’ll do it.
it’s a mistake to reread the messages
but it’s too late now.
you don’t even know what I’m talking about.
you have the wrong idea.

my mother and the other woman.
an unlikely truce, like sisters, like enemies.
there is art and there is truth
and what I’m doing isn’t art anymore.
I’m not even lying, I’m not even exaggerating,
I’m just spitting up all the
filth that’s been trapped in my lungs.

I know too much,
I hold it all like a child holds
a bag of marbles.
I can’t imagine the boulders
my mother drags around.
I can’t imagine what I don’t know.
and now it hurts too bad
to force myself to speculate.
“the other woman” is funny
because there wasn’t just one.
because at some point
everyone is the other women.
even me, the daughter grows up
and stops being your best boy
or close enough
and becomes just another woman.

there is art and there is trash
and you know which one this is.
I’m not even trying to polish this shit,
I’m regurgitating what I’ve been fed.
that’s all, that’s all.

we can get deeper in if you want.
we can talk about the money
or about things even worse than that.
we don’t talk about anything.
most of the time, I try not to even think.
you could be a different man
if I really believed, but I don’t.
I see you now. I see you more
than I ever wanted to.

there is art out there
but I don’t know where to find it.
it’s not here.
go look somewhere else.

my father always had the right opinions
and always did the wrong thing.
I’m not sure to use past or present tense
while I write this.
my father was hurting, when I was little
I could smell it on him.
a little stronger, a little worse
than all the other adults.
my father, my father, my father
never took me to church
or taught me to pray.
but he did tell me stories
of getting cast from the garden of Eden.

my father, my father, my father,
I’ve had no other father.
all my life I wanted to fight with you
but now I watch you getting old.
I almost want to pet your old man head
and forgive you. I almost can’t wait
until you forget what you’ve done
so I can pretend I have too.
I hope when you get old,
like really old,
you finally stop being angry.

my father, my father, my father,
you could never love my mother enough
to make up for what you’ve done.
not in the rest of your life,
not in ten lifetimes.

my father, my father, my father,
I don’t want to tell you
but I get a little weepy
when I think about you old and confused
when I will be just some woman
pushing your hair back.
you may not become better
but maybe I can expect you to become
ineffective and docile. quiet maybe.
but as your rage dies in you
I fear it grows in me.
I want to sharpen it and
make it useful. if I point it back at you
what’s the use in that?
threatening an old man.
you’re too old for that,
I’m too old for that.

my father
is half man, half concept to me.
he moves the mountains,
he drives the plot. and his mother
couldn’t save him
and my mother
couldn’t save him
and I doubt I can either.

my mother, my mother, my mother,
the world has been unfair to her.
I have been unfair to her.
and from her I inherit my fear.
it keeps me alive,
but it also keeps me stuck.
and I guess she loves him and
who I am to judge them,
besides the ridiculous product of them.