and if you could
run your fingers
over every word
i wrote, like dirt,
or braille, maybe
you might cry as
well. darling boy.

The Circus gongs excite the Throngs in nighttime Never Land –
They swarm to see the destiny of Freaks at their command,
While Acrobats step pitapat above the shifting sands
And Lady Fat sits down to chat and oozes charm unplanned.

The Dwarfs in suits, so small and cute when marching with the Band,
Ask crimson Clowns with frozen frowns, to hold a mutant hand,
While Tamers’ whips with withered tips, throughout the winter land,
Lure Cats entranced through hoops enhanced with flames of fires fanned.
  
White Elephants in big-top tents boast black-tusk contraband
To regiments of Sycophants who overflow the stands,
But No One sees anomalies, and No One understands.
  
At night’s demise, the dither dies, the lonesome Crowd disbands,
Down dead-end streets the Horde retreats, their tattered rags in strands,
And Janes and Joes reweave their woes, for thoughts of change are banned.
  
To play a part in Three-Ring Art, I thought I’d try my hand –
I mastered skills, I felt the thrills, I breathed and seethed firsthand –
But destiny denied to me to taste a lifetime spanned
With tightrope walks and trapeze chalks ... excepting second-hand...

For alcohol provoked a fall, as if a reprimand,
And now, a heap, I sometimes keep the ticket office manned...

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.

Look at where we are now.
We have **** stores on every corner.
Our fifteen year old pipe dreamers
just collectively **** themselves.

We have dubstep finally.

Who the **** needs
an instrument
or training
or talent
when
I can steal fruity loops
and make my own ****?
I make dope beats at the same place
I
"write"
"poetry".

A cold fog is seeping into the park
across the street and I like to say "****" a lot.

Google makes me feel like a ******* king,
ordering my minions
to go and fetch me
the whys and wherefores of
how butterflies communicate.

Why?

Because *******, that's why.

We have countries revolting
against *******
who have been in power
for decades
but now we have
Facebook,
*******!
Take that!
You can't get away with ****.
Ask Osama.
How long will it take before peace sets in?
Will it take as long for the machines to take over?
Both outcomes seem inevitable.

We have as much ***
as we can download
and pretty soon

our reality will be completely virtual.
If you got the money, honey.

I see our white bloated
underbelly
sagging and scraping
****
against ***** beer stained floors,
a crimson trail,
bodies in the swath
of decadence
and a most
revolting pursuit of debauchery,
Thank God!

It's fun to go off the grid sometimes,
like when cable
and the interwebs
become that luxury
that you can't justify,
you know, reality.
Ha! What a joke.

It wont be long until some clown
figures out time travel
and we all burn up in
the resulting feedback loop.
That's what the big bang was.
Some other clown,
some other place,
figured **** out.

It's not gonna be me, Jack.

I'm on the cusp.
Not really, I am a full on scorpio,
*******.

But

I was lucky enough
to remember
rotary phones
and lite brites
and playing ******* outside.
Sounds nostalgic and sweet, right?
**** that,
those hours I spent
burning some heavy metal logo
into that stump outside mom's house?
With a ******* magnifying glass
*** we didn't know what cable tv or mp3's were?
I was dreaming
about **** shops
and making weird ****** up
noises that sound alarmingly
similar to fuckstep.
**** YES!
I was bored as ****
and couldn't wait for a day
when I could plug in a new
******* universe,
my universe,
my way,
I create the characters and the storyline.
My internal apps do the rendering.
Get it?
I was thinking of that ****
way back when,
so it makes sense that
someone
a little more ambitious
and well funded
was making that stuff,
even back then.
The farmers don't let the sheep know much, do they?

That's all well and good mate,
but how happy are you gonna be
when you lose all your **** because
some 22 year old knows more about
binary than you do?
How ******* awesome is your pabst
collection and your dad's old 45's gonna
be when you are *** out because you
thought you could become an internet
billionaire and your sister just got tired
of carrying your ***?
This world is ******
and we are growing out of our pants too fast.
Even the smart ones aren't gonna be able to keep up.
Have fun mother *******.
Do it now,
NOW!
Get laid as much as you can
with as many as you can,
but love them all,
and mean it,
you *******,
this **** isn't gonna happen again.
We are on the cusp of the singularity
and it's gonna be one hell of a ride.