I died in bed
On a cold December evening in 1977
Screaming hatred for my father
Muffled by a goose down pillow
Damp with hot tears
Seventeen spoiled years
Was there even a Christmas in '77?
I got the coffee table bible
My mother left for me
(She got one for my brother too)
The good old arcane King James Version
With concordances and maps
And incredibly realistic engravings of
The heroes and saints of Christian history
Abraham with his knife to Isaac's neck
Jacob's ladder, wrestling with God
David slings a stone, throws it at the giant
Through Saul God made David king
Jonah surfing the whales back.
Then there were all the portraits of Jesus
There had to be a hundred of them
I liked the one where he was walking on the water
And he bore the stripes with such dignity and integrity
The stations of the cross
The portrait that showed him lying down on the crossbar
As a brutal Roman warrior used a sledgehammer to drive nails through his tender hands and feet
He seemed so out of place between the two wicked sinners he was sandwiched in between
With their laughing and obscene mocking
I'm sure my mom hoped we would make ourselves part of that family
In some way or another
But I was listening to the Clash and the *** Pistols
I could have paid closer attention to what my father was going through
If I didn't have so much coming down on me
**** falling from on high burying me
In even more misery
The process caused me to distrust love
It caused me to write off joy as fleeting, difident emotion
I died in that bed
It could have been '75
But somehow hope had grown
In the midst of uncomfortable confusion
It could have been '76
Might as well hold out for the Bicentennial
Those were the days
I turned seventeen
And that number took on special meaning
17 in '77
Dad had a few nervous breakdowns
He put his fist through the wall
He insisted,"My nerves are shot my nerves are shot
$100 do this for me
You re the only she will listen to"
But I'll take the cash and the car keys
Why does it still feel like you were doing it to me
Off to O.K.C.
Have a little talk
About what I have no memory
But NEVER mentioning the hope
That you would come back
Despite daddy's tear-filled begging
Why?
I don't feel too guilty
It was all relative to how I'd been treated the year before
When I came home I was condemned
By a man who'd gotten out of the habit of saying "I love you"
So I felt justified
Screaming "I HATE YOU!!!"
Deep into my poor pillow

It would be easy to say I didn't truly hate him
In December of '77 I genuinely did
Almost 40 years down the road
I know it's the powers that I despised
It was circumstances dancing so clumsily
Caught up in the inevitable vortex that
Tears things apart with ease
But fumbles when trying to replace and rearrange what's left
Few there are who can survive
I wasn't one
I died in bed
Empty inside
Brain drained
Still as the motionless mattress
I'll never love again
Years will teach me the foolish blasphemy
Of cursing my father
And when they buried him in the ground
I sensed he knew
How to play the scape goat
It wasn't him I really hated
But he bore that burden until I figured it out
Long before they lowered him down
I knew my love for him was eternal
That he would carry it with him wherever he went
And if I didn't die in bed that day
A good part of me did
Of this I'm certain
I won't say "the best part"
I still have strengths
But I'm always wondering
The kind of man I would be
With one less bible in the house
And my mother playing Farkle with me