The Hunted Poet

I.
Is it something in ink he said,
Something he published,
That frosts you over whenever he's mentioned
Second-hand, third-debased, by implication?
Was it one of those oracle-poems he scribbled,
Appraising your child-phase in advance of any
Hormonal event?
He dressed you up as a red skin-painter,
Warfeather-bonneted, hatchet-flinging,
Bloodthirsty smasher of fatherly icons,
And imagined you pupally vision questing,
Defying--what? That poky-faced pale guy
Bluepenciling essays with angel-glyphs?
Here he drags strangers into your birthday,
Here you're a schoolboy on coven-hall steps;
Glimpses of you, that’s all we get.
He keeps seeing gods in him,
Portents and prophecies,
And, reflexively, him in their midst.
Judgmental, conceited,
Omnipotent, didactic . . .
How you must hate poets!
(Don't look at me, don't look, now look away.)
Our voices are similar, his and mine,
A flatlining modernist sort of drone,
Dust-dry in places, in need of a drink,
Often mixed with regret and a pinch of self-pity,
More introspective than expectant.
We diverge in careers: he's been a professor,
A state poet laureate, a workshop fellow;
Accomplished, I tell you!
I envy him, clearly, you think . . . Keep on thinking!
I'm not done yet, and though I'm no stalker,
I intend to take this research further.

II.
His wife (your mother) died not long ago,
Devastating, surely, it had to be,
What with kids grown up and married or off
On their lone wild and woolly excursions.
Review how she died, how you found her at home,
Tongue lolling from mouth like a heatstroked hound.
Dignity, sir! Yet for once he shifts focus
From his own athanasia to argue for hers.
Will your monotheistic house of worship
Even allow a goddess her niche?
As expected, the spotlight turns back to illume
The self-referential. But this is a clue
To the son's blue reactions; 'tis a burden,
I'm thinking, to have such a parent,
Annotating, expanding the painful details,
And while you're happily hopping through life,
Reveling, roistering, free as a bird,
He's permuting the script of his own demise.