ichor

BANG BANG!

ZEUS | KING YOU SHALL BE, UNTIL THE CORPSES MAKING UP YOUR THRONE TURN TO DUST AND YOU ARE LEFT WITH NOTHING.

     this man.
     this is a man that you know;
     he is not some fictional creation
     of a pantheon you will never touch.
     you know him.

     he is the absence at the dinner table,
     the empty seat at
     your school play,
     the reason why you've never
     written a father's day card
     in your life.
     he doesn't exist,
     but you know him.
     he ravaged your mother's innocence
     and left you behind
     as a token,
     a trophy,
     a remembrance she didn't ask for
     and now she won't look
     you in the eyes.

     he's the reason you stopped
     wearing skirts when you ride
     the subway.
     his hands crawl like arachne
     up your thigh,
     and you swear that
     hades would burn cooler.
     he calls you sickly names,
     ones that cower in the darkness
     for they are too monstrous
     to be seen by daylight and
     little girls
     (did he forget
     you're a little girl too?)
     you can feel him on your body,
     stains of bloody handprints
     that you'll never wash off.

     you know him.
     you are him.

     now doesn't it seem unholy
     that this man has a throne,
     that the very people he has
     ruined and ravaged
     bow down at his feet?
     but oh,
     doesn't it sound like retribution
     when they swear his name,
     when they butcher it
     in their mouths,
     when they tear it to pieces
     and hurl it into flames
     because humans
     are destructible.

     he comes home staggering
     with liquor on his breath
     and momma's been through enough
     and he doesn't make it
     through the door.
     nineteen years of fatherless days
     and the day you meet him
     you send him reeling;
     retribution for your mother,
     retribution for the other kids
     with someone missing
     like a hole ripped through
     their home,
     retribution for yourself.

     the next time you wear a skirt
     you break his fingers
     ten ways to hell
     before he can get past your knee.
     you leave him howling on a
     dingy subway seat
     but you've prevented a week's
     worth of lightning storms
     and saved the little girl
     you pass on the corner
     two blocks down.

     he looks in the mirror
     and sees a man;
     no god sits in his skin.

     he is you and he is me
     and we are him;
     we are stained bloody by
     more than seven deadly sins.
     you and i are human
     and so is he.
     we can destroy him.

     some nights,
     we already have.