Here is an advance peak at my latest poetry collection slated for release in 2018 called Drowning in Sanguine Dreams. It's a tribute to my Dad. It was very painful to write, but I hope you like it.
All these years, you’ve cast me in the
clay of your shadow.
But, I seemed to love only myself.
My world was an antinomic array of
colors. Your world was stringent
lines, and tetrahedrons.
I once made you guess where I could
have been, never where I should have been. Why? Why, Dad?
Why did I give you a hard time?
Now that you’re gone, there’s no noose
hanging lazily around my neck, waiting for its turn at being fastened tightly.
Now that you’re gone, I’m more unhappy
than I’ve ever been.
Romance is such a waste of time. Finding friendship in an open handshake
and an acrimonious split by text message.
Family never calls sacrifice sacrifice.
Family never expects forgiveness. You taught me that.
I could never tell you I loved you face
to face, but I always have, no matter how hard I tried to hide it.
Now that you’re gone, there’s an
insufferable emptiness devouring everything that made me whole.
Until I become the void itself that
consumes my soul.
Seeing you there, sprawled on the
ground, EMS trying to save you, pounding at your heart, willing it to live…
When I had broken it long ago.
Did it ever occur to me that I could
lose you? Did it ever dawn on me
that you could go?
Now that you’re gone, shadow and light
roll into one everlasting twilight, and hither I roam, searching like a young
lamb seeking his shepherd.
For years, it was you, me and Mom.
No one else. Christmas just the three of us. A nucleus. An indestructible atom.
Yet I took you for granted. I never said how much it hurt that you
never bragged about me to our other relations. You’d talk about my brothers, my sister.
But you gave so much of yourself to
me. You didn’t leave because you
loved us.
We’re family. We’ll always be.
Dreams are quiet when I ask you to
come.
Sleep is restful. I have nowhere to run.
Daylight is miserable. Night time worse. Splendor is a memory. But, we’ve been through worse than people could put us through.
Never as much as it hurts to lose you.
In a world where I was wrong, you
defended me. At an age when I am
expected to stand alone, you lifted me up.
Now that you’re gone, the world is a
barren husk. A cavity in my chest
carries nothing.
For I am nothing.
I was nothing.
Until you brought me into this world
and called me your son.
