almondeye7's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Poem:Father of my Country This is my Second entrey today, THE FATHER OF MY COUNTRY All Fathers in Western Civilization must have a military origin. The ruler, governor, yes, he is was the gerneral at one time or other. And George Washington won the hearts of his contry-the rough military man with awkward sincere drawing-room manners. My Father; have you ever heard me speak of him? I seldom do. But I had a father, and he had military origins-or my orgins from him. are military, militant. That is, I remember him only in uniform. But of the navy, 20 years a chief petty officer, always away from home. It is rough and hard for me to speak now. I'm not used to talking about him. Not used to naming his objects/ objects that never surrounded me. A woodpecker with fresh bloody crest knocks at my mouth. Father, for the first time I say your name. Name rolled in thick Polish parchment scrools, name of Roman candle dripping when I sit at my table alone each night, name of uniforms and name of telegrams, name of coming home from your Sub, name of shiny shoes name of Hawaiin dolls,name of mess spoons, name of greasy machinery, and name of stencilled names. Is it your blood I carry in a test tube, my arm, to let fall,crack,and spill on the sidewalk In front of the men I know, I love, I know, and want? So you lest my house when I was just a baby Being replaced by other machinery, and I didn't belive you left me.
This scene: the trunk yielding treasures of a green fountain pen, heart-shaped mirror,amber beads, old letters with brown ink, and the gopher snake stretched across the palm tree in the front yard with woody trunk like monkey skins, and a sunset through the skinny persimmon trees. you came walking, not even a telegram or post card from Tahiti. Love, love, through my heart like ink in the thickest nubbed pen, black and flowing into words. you came to me, and I at least six in age. Six doilies of lace, six battleship cannon, six old beerbottles, six thick steaks, six love letters,six clocks running backwards, six watermelons, and six baby teeth, a six cornered hat on six men's heads, six lovers at once or one lover at sixes and sevens: how I confuse all this with my dream walking the tightrope bridge with gold knots over the mouth of an anemone/tissue spiral lips and holding on so that the ropes burned as if my wrists had been tied If George washington had not been the father of my contry, it is doughtful that I would ever have found a father. Father in my mouth, on my lips, in my tongue, out of all my womanly fire, Father I have left in my steel filing cabinet as a name on my birth certificate, father, I have left in the teeth pulled out at detists' offices and thrown into their garbadge cans, Father living in my Polish tantrums and my American speech, Father, not a holy name, not a name I cherish but the name I bear, the name that makes me one of a kind in any phone book because you changed it, and nobody but us has it, Father who makes me dream in the dead of night of the falling cherry blossoms, Father who makes me know all men will leave me if I love them, Father who made me a maverick, a writer a namer, name/father, sun/father, moon/father, bloody mars/ father, Other children said, "My father is a doctor" or "My father gave me this camera," or :my father took me to movies" or "My Father and I went swimming." but my Father is coming in a letter once a month for a while, and my father sometimes came in telegram but mostly my father came to me in sleep, my Father because I dreamed in one night that I dug through the ash heap in back of the pepper tree and found diamond shaped like a dog and my father called the dog and it came leaping over to him and he walked away out of the yard down the road with the dog jumping and yipping at his heals, my father was not in the telephone book in my city; my father was not sleeping with my mother at home; my father did not care if I studied the piano; my father did not care what I did; and I thought my father was handsome and I loved him and I wondered why he left me alone so much, so many years in fact, but my father made me what I am a lonely women without a purpose, just as I was a lonely child without any father. I walked with words, words, and names, names. Father was notone of my words Father was not one of my names, But now I say, George you have become my father in his 20th century naval uniform. George Waghinton, i need your love; George i want to call you Father, Father, my Father, Father of my country that is me. And I say the name to chant it. To sing it. To lace it around me like weaving cloth. like a happy child on that Shining afternoon in the palmtree sunset with her mother's trunk yielding treasures, I cry and cry, Father, Father, Father, have you really come home? 11:20 a.m. - 2002-06-11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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