I like this new feeling, I hope it stays

There's an apparition of my father on the lawn

Taking a long hard puff from his cigarette

Ash dribbling down his hand and into his lap

The back of his head says to me

Through lips in his hair

That the cicadas will lay dead for 17 more years

And so to this I, of course, say

To fuck off and do the same

There's an apparition of my father the last time I saw him, on top my college bunk

Flipping through all of my old labs

Looking for god knows what

You're a genius he says

One of a kind

And to this, I offer the simplest of platitudes

In that I threaten to shoot off a chunk of my own brain and skull

If he doesn't get the hell down

There's an apparition of some old man

That I will never know

Leaning against the family's old hunker

As I try to make enough money to not die

He's kicking at the dirt and looking so so ashamed 

As if he's just down on his luck

He turns to me  with no mouth this time

Just blank aged skin

And somehow beams it into my brain

That he hasn't thought of me for a week

An entire week

And to this I do the kindest thing that I can

And calmly tell him to put his skull under my tire

So that I can do the same

There are all kinds of apparitions in my head

That are all of the different versions of my father

He just seems to always be there

And it's gotten to be more annoying than anything really

I go through periods of insanity where I can dream calmly of him

But now, at 3 am, in my gross ass bed

I just want him to find his own home

I think to myself

If you ever really loved me

You'd step off the third floor of your house

By going through the door of my old bedroom

In a dream, I find the absence of my father's apparition

in a field tucked away in some forest

There's his grave with nothing but his name

And me

With nothing to say and no one to say it too

I take a drag off of a cigarette

With the ash dribbling onto my hand and into my lap

And take peace in the silence

I could say fuck off

For just the symmetry of what it means

But instead, I just sit facing away, towards some setting sun

And bask in the numbness that is letting go


Songs that I think match da vibe :p

38Kea - Head Start (prod.38Kea) (youtube.com)

Space 8 (youtube.com)

To absurdity : r/OCPoetry (reddit.com)

Maggots : r/OCPoetry (reddit.com)