Paternals 1 (2003)

What wakes me at 3:30 a.m.
after only 5 hours of sleep?
Yeah -- I sure had to piss --
and I felt buried under
too many covers, & the cat
was irritate with my turns,
my wife too, probably,
why bother them with
my restlessness: So I
trudged downstairs to
horsepiss & get on my
knees to pray Thy Will
Father Not Mine:
I am about my Father’s
business then, but
which one? My own
father at my age was
clearing the land &
building a chapel
and raising 20 ton
dicks in deference
to some ferally
cold instinct inside
a memory of Iona:
This morning I read
from Fiona McLeod
about a man of Iona
with a passion for
a sea-seal which
he seemed borne
with or cursed by
or fathered in:
That tone is my
tune, the sea-songs
I mean, salty rollers
I ride jolly roger
butt naked on: The
silliest bouree of all
which I have sacrificed
years of sleep for:
That same beckoning
wave I was baptized
in 30 years ago,
replete with the high
and low blessing of
God: The work I
carry on here is my
father’s and his demi-
fathers, well-work,
gleaming buckets
of seal-cold waters
“sweepin’ white an’
ghostly through
the moonlit nights”:
A predawn vigil
punctuated by
sexual fevers & channel
flipping (the ground
war outside Baghdad
growing bloody
& real): I’m laboring
in my salt mines
too early because
there is so much
to bring up: I mean
so much has been
thrown down there
over the years that
I’m soul-constipated,
rammed to the gills
with memories
dreams & reflections,
myth & mysteries,
lions & tigers & bears
Oh My: Bra-cups
& guitar picks,
wads of Kleenex,
Bibles & bottles,
spent pens &
poems & spleen
of the ages & ages
& ages: Chartres
and Corco Duibne,
Hell Castle and
Club Meds: My
crazy father slow-
dancing with Thor
of the North Wind,
a cloistered gay
embrace embowering
the caresses I soon
lavish on my wife:
What’s a son to do
but explicate the sea
bucket by curragh
by skull by testicle,
my thousand sons
floating off to you
in these rickety
paper boats: