DECOMMISSION // forging on foreign tides // building new legacies

DECOMMISSIONED

The first time you ever said you were proud of me

Was after I was slapped in the face in the midst of polite company

Smacked on the lips - a sucker punch kiss of cruelty

From her lips she dripped a poison that, even still, might get the best of me

And she looked at me, and she said that she saw - nothing.

Not a goddamn thing that was worthwhile to anyone or anything

And the doctor looked me up and down and she clicked her tongue

And said surely ma'am there's surely gotta be something

And that bitch of a sham mother looked through me and doubled down

She dug in her stubborn faux leather suburban stilettos

and carved my name on the tombstone

Chiseled me down like rusted iron on the graveyard sign

Withering away but tryin its damnedest to fade away with its dignity

She cut me to the bone. just another signpost into my home

The hell of the filth she made me make my poor unfortunate soul

And I sat there.

motionless.

Frozen in that space on the doctor's couch

Studying patterns in the carpet

Memorizing the feeling of the upholstery

I can still tell you the blue of her walls

And the beige of the sweaters

And the pinks and the soothing colours

I can still smell the subtle febreeze

And I can tell you how often I visit

As another specter still haunted and haunting me

And I can tell you how she Loved it -

How she loved with her crooked twisted heart

The power she held over me

My soul on her broken Ferris wheel

And she spun it further down and down —

-

But this is the story of when I knew you loved me

And this is out of order for how it goes usually -

Because after your wife spat on my scars

And insisted on the whole room letting her have her way with me

We all went home - what home for me !- and I memorized the streetlamps

On the streets I watched and patterned quilted in dulled memory

But before she went on her tirade,

The thing that made her do me dirty, was how you washed me clean

Because you looked at me, same question posed by the doctor

And you looked at me like you actually wanted me

And that was different.

Different and better than I usually knew

From you.

Maybe you knew too

Bravely broke your silence

Took off your own scrutiny -

Because you told the doctor you saw yourself on my face

And in my words and my composure and my temper and my brains

And my humor and my flaws and my need to be alone and need to never ever be without company -

And you said you Loved what you saw.

And that was new for you.

Truly, cross my little heart, It was more New for me.

And even More, you said you loved to watch the way I grew

And knew and fought, with broken bones, for better things

Scrappers, you and I, we've always been, its in our blood

It's the story past through catacombs of our family

And you loved to give me a "nudge", a gentle hand, a guide

To just change a little on the approach - on the stance, on the swing -

You loved to do that for me.

Thats what you told the doctor, before I had to freeze.

It was so subtle, or bulldozed through, more like,

That I never even knew you ever even looked at me -

And that's how you parented me.

That was how you were a father to me.

And it wasn't the holy buffer, the perfect wall

inpenetrable kingdom from the evil that would come

But it kept me warm, enough.

A spark that kept on burning

Even when the shit seemed like it would

Be the end of me

And I would truly never be

worth the effort, Just like she told the doctor,

Never worth, anything.

Thats the voice that rings in my ears and in my nightmares she never screams.

She doesn't need to, her voice is confident and quiet and measured when she tells the room I'm unworthy.

But you steered the courser from the crows nest

Thirty thousand feet above

Or twenty thousand leagues below the sea -

And you kept me from running ashore on her ice -

The glacier pace won't ground me and keep me from moving

to my new shore,

My new world, my new sea

You were my anchor, pop - wish you came sooner!

Wish you stood up to her like my hero

How much sooner, how much more could I be?

But a decommissioned lighthouse still stands strong against the breaker waves

And faded paint still glows a Spark - and that was Enough for me.