is what I tell them, now.


"I am only going to hurt you.
I promise."

I will laugh with you
and I will let you see my core,
and you will want so terribly much
to be a part of me

you will do almost anything.

"I told you not to."

I will let you in.
I will open myself completely
and make myself vulnerable at your feet.
You will trust me.

" Stop."


I will tell you about my family
and you will meet them.
You will think you understand me.

Did you think I was lying when I told you I was a *******?

I ******* told you.

I'll make you feel like the most beautiful
woman in the universe.
You will know in your bones
that I am yours alone.


It will be magical and true,

at the time.

We will be in love with each other. Madly, crazily, undoubtedly and completely in love and it will be the most wonderful and pure and good thing that has ever happened to us both and we will pledge eternal loyalty to each other and we will both mean it and we will be happy beyond our comprehension.

Then... I will

change.

I will grow tired of you.
I will become distant.
I will become indifferent.
I will become cruel.

You will be confused
and cry
and plead and pout and sulk and berate and beleaguer.

You will question yourself
and your motives, like it was your fault or your failing
when it was neither.

If it makes you feel better,
I will apologize.
I won't mean it though.
Not all the way, not like I should.

It was just me
being me
and doing

exactly

what I said I would.

I realized the other night,

as I stood
screaming
at my son,

that I was breaking
our hearts.

I walked away
as soon as  I saw
the line
in the distance.

The line that
I will never cross.

I walked away
and felt my fathers fist
across my face.

I spared my
precious boy
the terror of
being beaten
by the man
he wants to grow
up and be just like.

I walked away
when I saw
the tears well up
in his innocent eyes
and the confusion
contorting his face,
when I heard some
frustrated father
misdirecting his own
anger and confusion
towards an undeserving
child and realized the
******* father was me.

I heard my father screaming at his woman about having a kid who would do "whatever the **** I tell him to if you hit him hard enough" and realizing that kid was me. I remember a part of me withered when I heard this.

He was right.
My father conditioned me
to take a beating.
He taught me how to
shut the **** up
and do what the **** I am told.
He taught me not to question his orders,
even when I knew they were wrong.
He taught me obedience
by beating me.
He taught me submission
by leaving me no other choice.

He taught me how to be broken.

I learned my lessons well.
I let people push me around because that was my place.
I let people get over on me because I didn't want to confront them.
I lost my girls to other guys because I was weak and scared.
I got passed up for promotions because I was hesitant and indecisive.

How do you forgive someone for conditioning you to be a failure?

How do I reconcile loving my father for the frail human that he is and hating him for the vile and abusive monster that he was?

When I saw the look on my sons face I wondered briefly if that was how I used to look when my father was berating me.

Right before fist hit face.

How the **** could he hit me with that look of fear and confusion and conflicting feelings on my face that must have registered somewhere in his drunken mind.

I can't help but think
it must have been devastating
for him,
somehow, someway.

He stopped apologizing for the beatings and
I stopped thinking
I didn't deserve them.

All of these thoughts and feelings passed
through my brain in a split second
and I turned away from my son.

My precious son.

My reason for existing.

My everything.

I turned away from his tear
stained face and sat down to cry
for a while myself.

I knew that I had caused some damage.
I thought back to all those times I sat crying in my room as a kid and wondered what would have made me feel better at the time, besides the obvious of not just having my *** kicked by a grown man.

42 years
of  gnawing pain
and frustration
and fear
and silence
and tears
and rage
and crushing loneliness
and shame

and fear and fear and fear

walked up the steps to
where a ******* 12 year old boy
sat alone.

42 years
of  breaking
the cycles of abuse and addiction
walked up the stairs and
spent the next hour
healing what I had damaged
in two minutes.


Later that night,
as I lay in bed questioning
every ******* decision I have ever made,
again,
I heard some sort of noise that startled me.

I leaped out of bed and took a quick route through the place to see what the noise was.
I never did find out what caused it but I called up to the boy quietly and asked if he heard it.
It appears he had been awake as well and had been rattling around in his own thoughts.

My boy had been thinking about death.

He was realizing the eventual imminence
of our own mortality and the weight of that thought was
crushing.
I was there for him, though.
I was able to put his mind at ease.
We talked of death, and life, and God, and philosophy
and we had a wonderful conversation
together sitting in his darkened room.

His small hand in mine, we healed each other.

I can't listen to the ******* cure
ever again with out feeling empty.
Way to go robert smith,
you big ******* depressing
*******.

Ever since you told me
lovesong was yours and fuckfaces
song I can't listen to some of my
favorite cure songs without thinking of....them.
Them being you and him, not us.
Us being you and me.

I can't listen to cat stevens
because harold and maude
was our movie. Ours!
Now, the last love song makes me cry like a *****.

I can't listen to ******* inxs anymore.
Never tear us apart drops me to my knees.
I can't listen to the kinks
or edith piaf
or talking heads
or leonard ******* cohen
or great lake swimmers
or fever ray
or peter sarstedt
or portishead
or killswitch engage
or paul mccartney singing maybe I'm amazed
or pearl jam
or ween,
especially ween, one of my favorites, *****.

Gotye is a prophet.

If I even think of antony and the johnsons,
my chest seems to cave in on itself
and I am filled with such a deep despair,
a longing for something,
anything
to take away
the pain of knowing
I lost you.

I can't listen to so much good music out there because that was our thing.
So many times we would lie in bed after loving each other
and listen to mixes we had made for one another.
Those were my favorite times.
Sipping whiskey with lime juice,
Reveling in your smells,
your juices covering me.
Your dog farting so bad
all we could do was laugh
or we would puke.

The first few notes of alexi murdochs
love you more, bring forth tears like niagra.
I cannot listen to that song without crying immediately.

I don't understand how feelings like that go away so suddenly.

It's *******.

This isn't a poem.

Poems are supposed to be beautiful
and about love
or beautiful and about loss of love
or just plain ******* beautiful
about something like a ******* tree
or a nice view
or flowers.

I have to write about how I hate the empty ******* space in my chest whenever I think of your name.
I have to write about the thousandth time I cried over you,
like now.
I have to write about how
the bright blue
of our love was replaced by
the ***** brown of
our lies and deceit.

Nobody gives a **** about that stuff.
I can't write a ******* poem to save my life.
I want to put down on paper
the weariness and exhaustion.
I want to express how I feel
so that maybe I can save
someone else
the pain of suffering alone.
I want to write you the most beautiful poem on the earth,
the one that makes you
understand just how much I care
for you
and how much and I love you
and I want you to read it
and forget about your fears
and past hurts
and realize I am the only man for you
and nobody else will ever come between us ever again.

But I can't.

I am not smart enough.
I am not creative enough.
I am not...enough, for you.

I don't want to even try anymore.
I want to forget you like I said I never would.
I want to love another like I said I never would.
I want to be a liar, like I said I never would.
I want to stop loving you, like I said I never would.

I want to listen to love songs and not miss you.

Don't think, because we're ******* again,
I have forgotten the lies,
the tears
the gnashing and wailing
the avoided phone calls
and vague half truths.

Half a truth is all lie.