Eat Crow

write please read and enjoy

I am so angry that I slip away from a recognizable persona in my rage

in my younger days I called this temper by a name, mistaken 

for a personality all its own, I called him Thomas

I hated him, myself, separated from my actions

to claim responsibility for wicked mischief, misdeeds

amoral, apathetic and unconscionable misdoings 

that by burying him I only cried wolf to seem safe 

to those who loved me, as even years might pass

and I would be so well-behaved and never slip

but the bitterness is repressed, bottled 

it is the Irish, my grandfather dancing a jig on my heart

and my father before, who withdraws into remorseful isolation

from standing over me with his belt and seething, 

who works away for weeks, 

it is the curse of all the men in my family 

the predisposition to heart attacks

we who die of broken hearts; explosive 

ignoble, ignorant and all the damning damage we do 

only the very best of men grow beyond themselves in this regard

as my father did, though in his shadow I cool my heels

content for this poison to run its course 

that I might die in touch with an honest merging

of two sides

of one dead snake.