IN-HOUSE
I don’t have anyone to charm me
with stick-figure body and bulbous smiling head
under a Sun looks that it is there
to shine on me for centuries
and shine on, what is more to the point,
my family
family beside sweet box house and
swing and tree
and dog and cat
all
of which I do not have.
Correction, do have cats, not one
but at last count a brother and sister two,
which,
for all that freakish feline smarts
have given no indication of
developing dormant Da Vinci artistic skills
which — should they achieve such —
will not take long to
strike your attention
destined to sweep the networked world
as viral meme
no
this is a tale of absence
no tiny Rembrandt or Picasso
exists
to include any
rendering of me in her
his idyllic scene
(only harsher, dark mythology idylls
do I evoke or awaken it would seem
poster child for
existenz thinking I
have come to be)
less embodiment of
verb to create than
verb deconstruct
but how far from childhood and innocence and fathering
we have strayed
how far
from love which
should always be our theme
so much I could have taught this missing
tiny artist being
so much teaching I have done
lost
out there somewhere perhaps
but to the cause of humanity bare service indeed
and so
back to that picture
have to mind’s eye it since real
never appeared
(perhaps
be in alternate universe or
other quantum
bullshit thing)
here
let’s close in with our camera, your camera,
do the extreme close up thing
not on me
you idiot
it’s the child we
need to see
need to linger there
awhile (if time and patience
things you do have
which you did bring)
see
if that smile be mine, what else be mine,
and what is not not mine
whose that could possibly be?
who gave
a daughter/son,
those eyes, that life, that
sweet, sneaky, saucy
demeanour
time to meditate on this
while there is still light
before
mental genre shifts (personal
climate changing)
and the sky
absurdly pretty Sun filled impossible sky darkens
and we are
alone on stage
after our soliloquy
curtain closed, house lights down
sad failed nobility
of this thing called tragedy