Uncle_______________

“The peanut-crunching crowd
“Shoves in to see

“Them unwrap me hand and foot—
“The big strip tease.
“Gentlemen, ladies

“These are my hands
“My knees.”

“Lady Lazarus” From Sylvia Plat: Her Life and Work. Copyright © 1973 by Eileen M. Aird

© 13 November 2011, the Griot Poet
1 Corinthians 13:11 - When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

His name is not important.

He, was my aunt’s live-in-boyfriend,

So, in the sixties, “uncle” worked for me.

His name is not important.

At four years of age,

He was a giant to me,

As I bathed in a bathroom sink in Washington, DC.

His name is not important.

My mother came in screaming,

Wielding a lead pipe

Striking my “uncle” across

His taller frame,

Bourbon on his breath

As his unconscious frame smacked the bathroom mat

We left DC on the next bus out (never went back)

My father picked us up in Winston…

My first meltdown was in front of a

Counselor that discerned the screen

I’d erected mentally

When I allowed myself to see:

I drank, I cursed, I swore, I whored... I screamed!

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

I have seen others like me, men and women lately

For whom their screens have been laid bare

By the worship of sports icons and demonology’s Mammon

I suddenly understood my favorite fiction hero:

The Dark Knight ™ became what he could not be

When as a child “all sense left his life”:

Strong,

Intelligent,

Disciplined,

Gadget(ed),

Martial arts; prose and technology…made sense to me.

At first,

My father was angry that I did not tell him before (nor did my mother),

I could not, nor could she

He was our protector

And he would have instantly become our avenger

And I wanted him as the father…the great father he’d been for me

In a ghetto where too many males

Knew their dads

Through barbed wire gates

And plate glass screens,

And mine was no longer opaque,

It was bare, clear, receded.

And in that light

I found a love that accepted me.

Despite; beyond my tears and screams…is freedom…is healing.

1 Corinthians 13:13 - And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these [is] love.