"Something to do with violence a long way back

and wrong rewards and arrogant eternity"

(Phillip Larkin)

***

A blood-letting of sorts

heralded your first day here.

Prehistoric beast that you seemed in your fear.

***

Fear that needed, needs still, a little more

than a kick in the teeth and three words to heal.

***

Confusion inevitably ensued,

and the twisted fears turn us all inside-out,

or rather, they skew our futures with incessant demands,

for a placation we may never fully discover.

***

OK think! (you were warned early on)

Come on, on your feet......I lie.

More like:

You bas-havethis-fuckyou-hateyou-

loveme-alllovewefuckinghateall

....loveyouson.

***

Though the last three words,

came so much later than you ever deserved.

***

Hardly surprising the confusion never dissipated,

but mutated,

in your sense of what it was you might allow yourself to become.

I suppose that's enough of that, a little of what I can imagine.

***

But what I am trying to say is that,

perhaps I can hold fast enough to make an attempt,

(full-hearted and half-arsed as it may be -

as most things are condemned to be)

an attempt to retract from blame and recrimination,

to slow the continual clockwork of hurt

and ask something simple.

***

Can we try and make sense of it as Father and Son?

***

Though you can never have your Dad back,

to ask some questions or talk,

and I don't expect miracles

-us holding hands as we walk

into a bright new dawn-

***

Can we just try

to use both our heads,

to recover some reasons

for the blood-letting of sorts,

that permeates both our lives

and which leaves us with words to try and heal

reality as we've known it,

as we approach it...