I've been slacking again, so I'm deeply sorry. I've been bummed out lately, but I should have known that writing poetry would be the perfect cure. Hopefully, this poem will make up for it.
Coming Down
I.
It's the feeling you get when you're coming
down from a high, sitting on concrete
steps. There are flowers across the street
springing up from a small plot of grass in
urbania:
tiger lilies, or something of the sort.
I looked up at the sun, trading in my long-term
vision for a revelation, and all I could see was
Icarus struggling to grip that slab of luminary
butter, falling to his death as his father wept.
And my father weeps. He weeps inside his mind
every day, and his son knows it. Like David did
with Absalom (sins, sins of our fathers), but I will
not be strangled and trampled from a tree branch.
I sat in the balcony in the auditorium, finding
musical tranquility from the performance and gazing
at the lights on either side of the stage: lemon. They
were neon yellow, glowing intermittently. I was
still a bit high then; all I wanted to do was hold you
because I care about you. I love you. A journey
awaits me, though, and I must go to lands of
babushkas, snow, and poverty. Lands of tan-faced
children, candy, and communism.
I must leave you, there, sitting on the concrete steps;
you looked at me, smiled, ruminatively and I wondered
if you were a guardian angel or not. I must leave you, weeping,
loving father, and you, mother. Patient mother who
bore me two weeks late and welcomed me with
pacifiers, religion, and a beautiful fortitude. Mother,
who I genetically favor with light hair, light eyes,
and a compassionate yet submissive disposition. The
crabapple tree would bloom every autumn, and you
would take pictures of my brother and I with our baby teeth
and boyish garb. And you, grandmother. You, with
leathery skin, emphysema, and a supernatural heart (your
aorta is lined with gold from an Israelite's throne, pumping
the blood of Jesus). I would tell you anything. I told you
on your porch in between cigarettes that yes, I drank
beer, and you shrugged it off and wanted me to compliment
your flowers. In your garden I saw everything from colors
to photosynthesis to love.
And you, brother. Together, we bore the sins of our father
through laughing and the strongest facades, braving the
earthquakes of reality. You, the younger, have empirically lived
before me, and I was scared for you. I am still scared for you, even though
you're a man. I always will be. I must leave you all, but
I will still see Mars from the universal sky, glowing red with
the fury of war (it burns so, so bright in August), and I will
still see the sun, the slab of luminary, celestial butter from
which Icarus fell. I am Icarus. You are Icarus. We are all
Icarus, and our fathers weep for us.
(to be continued)
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