This Man I Loved

This man I loved: 

This recondite man of coarse,
And hurtful phrases—
Always belittling, always berating,
Always, always,
On my case…

This ignoble king
Grown humble with age,
And fear of retribution.

Bane of my childhood,
Yet sorely missed.
Who, to this day, still rules
From the grave
A corner of my world.

This island of unresolved issues…
Who’d never punched a man
Without knocking him out,
Or saved a child
With his eviscerating opinions.

In whose dark light, so many
Lumen have fallen,
Barely glowing their hiccupy gloam,
Debauched, bewildered,
Dwindled, vitiated, decayed.

Coruscant no longer.
No longer fit to dream as they used to—

Lumbricoid terrestrials banished
From the sky.
Like the king who banished them in the ardor
Of his reign;
When he hurled thunderbolts and insults
Because kings could not die,
…and all the gods
Were dead.

A small man, sequoiaesque to his progeny,
Erecting impossible walls
And annexing the wills
Of his children,
So that they would never thrive,

Or ever fully recover.

Just like you—Old King,
Reticent and complex;
Not given to feeling sorry,
Not even for yourself.

Employed at eight,
Engaged at fourteen,
You raised three families without ever once
Saying, What about me?

We knew why you hated us:
Why you hated me—

The foolish boy, whose visage so closely matched
The man’s who had abandoned you
So long ago.
Whose face I wore in ignorance
Of your pain, along with his name,
And his blame.

Just as I blamed you for your faults
When I was young,
And your faults seem so clear,
And mine were less demarcated
And acknowledged.

I rheum over you now, oh instigator
Of my oppression—
Like a dog grown used to being kicked.

Humbled to the point
Where I could really use your wisdom
And certainty—
Which has outlasted my own.

But we were not saints.
We were not lucky.
And in this,
We are not alone.

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[1] ‘Recondite’ – difficult to figure out or understand.

[2] ‘Lumen’ - organisms emitting visible light. 

[3]  ‘Gloam’ - the time of day immediately following sunset.

[4] ‘Debauched’ – Morally corrupted.  Having been lead away from excellence or virtue.  Having reduce the value, quality, or excellence of; debased

[5] Dwindled’ – having been made to waste away, to cause to grow less in size, intensity, or number; diminish or shrink gradually.

[6]  ‘Vitiate’ - To reduce the value or impair the quality of. To corrupt morally; debase. To make ineffective; invalidate.

[7] ‘Coruscant’ – to emit vivid flashes of light; sparkle; scintillate; gleam.

[8]  ‘Lumbricoid’ – resembling an earthworm.

[9] Sequoiaesque – possessing characteristics that are similar to those of a sequoia tree.

[10] ‘Reticent’ - Not revealing one's thoughts or feelings readily.

[11] ‘Rheum’ – to tear up, to weep.