I don’t want to die,
I want to cease to exist.
To never have been born
And never have lived
For my soul and body to disappear
For any memory of me to be gone
To dissolve into nothingness and
Never have been anything at all

I’m right beside you.
Please do not think that I would
Be anywhere else.

I lie
and
I lie
and
I lie

I hide my behavior
to keep you safe.

I keep quiet
not to offend you.

I agree with you
to keep you happy.

I walk on eggshells
for you and
it’s never enough.

I lie
and
I lie
and
I lie

but when the truth
arrives at that
final moment;

jaws will drop
plates will shatter
dogs will growl

and
you’ll be long gone
after seeing what
a ghastly beast
I am

but for now

I lie
and
I lie
and
I lie

to keep us
together.

all that pain
and belittlement
you served me
day and night
when no one
was looking
made the little
man within you
feel much, much,
much bigger
but now you
stand before me
weeping
with no teeth
and the big man
within me
has forgiven you.

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to **** you.
You died before I had time ----
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My ****** friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ----

Not God but a *******
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the *****.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two ----
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you *******, I'm through.

the
smell
of the
barbecue grill
taunts
my hunger pains
I walk on by
uninvited
with no place
to
go.