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First Visit I am happy now, or so it seems. I grew up with the hippie generation; peace and love and all that. My father, a conservative man, didn’t like the Beatles or the long hairs. “They sound all right for a barber shop quartet, but I don’t get all this yeah, yeah, yeah stuff.” My father was a disturbed construction worker, who once chase a general contractor around his desk to get the money he was owed, and who covered the worn balls of his fingers with adhesive tape so that he could lay cinder block in the winter’s rain, and who fell to his death from a ten foot high scaffold, down a fifteen foot hole to the building’s cellar and broke his neck when I was a teenager, gave me a good start in life. I pissed it away. But I am happy now. I survived terrible break ups, and lost loves, and dope, and sport fucking to move into my comfortable home in suburbia. Oh I still remember the party nights with the beer, tequila and pot. I remember dropping acid and watching the Mothers of Invention give a concert and coming up with an explanation of how the group got its name. I am happy now. All those bong hits and psychedelic sojourns didn’t hurt me, not really. You see, doc, it’s just that I have this pain in my gut that never really goes away and I can’t stop smoking cigarettes, and I have these nightmares, I can’t sleep, and sometimes I think people are speaking in code. Oh yeah, I’ve had all the tests. There is nothing medically wrong with me, so my guy told me to talk to you. I’m sorry to take up your time. I’m sure you know people crazier than me. Don’t you? Don’t You? DON’T YOU!? |
Additional Notes:
This is meant to be a sort of narative.
This Poem was Critiqued By: Elaine Marie Phalen On Date: 2004-09-06 10:03:10
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.90000
Whew! The speaker's constant reassurance that he's happy is the clue to a state of increasing chaos. This narrative offers such a vivid sense of place - and time, because in those days place WAS time. I've know way too many people like this guy. But imbalances come from many sources and I'd say the father kicked in his contribution.
My father was a disturbed construction worker, [disturbed from the son's POV, and maybe in reality too]
who once chase[d] a general contractor
around his desk to get the money he was owed,
and who covered the worn balls of his fingers
with adhesive tape so that he could lay cinder block [what a striking, bleak image!]
in the winter’s rain, and who fell to his death
from a ten foot high scaffold, down a fifteen foot hole
to the building’s cellar and broke his neck when I was a teenager,[;]
gave me a good start in life. [interesting irony here!]
The father's personality is made remarkably clear in these few lines. He has an aggression that the son may have inherited, but it is used for a purpose. He's grim, gutsy, and doomed never to rest from his harsh labors. The son's rebellion against such a life is understandable. In S2, that "good start in life" doesn't pan out, but it's the speaker's personal choice that deflects it. Again, I knew too many of these people. For awhile, I was sort-of one myself.
The ending is appropriately frightening as control slips and slips. In S4 the mental instability is revealed like crumbling brickwork. The insanity is made manifest, and the reader reacts with a gasp. The poem ends on a note of menace. Now, unfortunately, there's another person involved, so the possibilities extend to and threaten his safety. It's not just the psychotic ex-hippie anymore.
This could stand as a metaphor for the whole turbulent period through which the speaker manages to survive, although not without damage. So, I think, did many others. The wounds are invisible in our youth because we have the physical stamina to mask them. Now that we're older and more physically unfit, the cracks widen.
"What ye reap, so shall ye sow." Probably that has a lot of truth!
You pulled me right into the narrative and that's the first thing I always want to happen when I read this sort of poetry. It's a strong and realistic story, right to the end.
Brenda