Loathsome father,

the farther I am from you,

            the better,

you strait-laced, life-denying,

            mediocre old bore.

 

Get off my back.

Let me live.

With the money.

Mine when you die? Too long.

Mine now, old man.

The punchline is “goodbye”

though you wouldn't know a joke

if it slapped you in your sanctimonious face.

 

Now I’m alive.

Life I love you,

at last I can love you,

at last I can love.

Here is colour, movement,

            laughter and relish.

Here is permission to enjoy.

Here is friendship

 

I was paddling in the shallows,

a petty, paternal pittance of a life,

a pretense – this is reality,

it's not fake

I’m awake,

I was asleep,

this is the deep.

-----------------------------------

They have taken away my silk robe

the maroon one,

with birds embroidered in yellow and blue

            and gold.

I tried to hide it,

a last reminder of what had gone,

but they found it.

The seventeen days since last touching a so-called friend

could be seventeen years,

I feel old now.

Beaten.

Alone.

And must leave this place.  

Inside an hour

I shall be outside.

How could this happen?

--------------------------------------------------

Dirt and degradation.

Honest work they say,

but what do they know?

A roof over your head they say,

but what do they know?

Food and clothes, they say,

but what – in their ignorance of disgusting reality -

do they know?

 

I am an ivy climbing a rotting tree

Feeding off decay

While life’s framework fails,

fungally infested falls,

my folly.

My father is like an oak,

Oh to be covered by his cloak.

Half-mad, I’ve enough left to know

what a good man he is

and how deep his roots go.

 

I must hold this bedraggled soul together

to make its choice of weary, dismal humiliations.

I would rather do anything

than crawl back

But it must be.

The despair is beyond repair,

I am an amputated man,

and memories of a shepherd’s flute haunt me.

 

I must put up with the religion

And my fucking older brother

And be a farmhand or something

My father is my father,

Home is home.

I am drowning in filth here.

This is death

 

Though it is and is not my home

But what choice is there

I am the migrating bird

I am the iron filings and

my Father’s house is the magnet.

------------------------------------------------------

Many miles leaden feet trudged

Puddle-drinking face smudged

I carry a ditch-shitting stink,

a starving soul in a starving body.

------------------------------------------------------

And there is the tower and then there’s the gate

I gather my rags and shuffle towards it.

Looking at the ground

Looking down,

Down at the dust

My gaze on the dust

and the broken sandals

on my blistered, filthy feet.

 

A man is running and crying and shouting.

I lift my eyes.

It is my Father

running towards me. 

He never runs

But today he is running.

He is smiling, he is weeping

He is running.

Forgetting the dignity of his position,

He is running.

The farmhands stand amazed.

He is running.

Never, never, ever before

But he is running.

My Father, my dad, is running

To me.

 

 

For the rest of the story – Luke ch 15 v21 onwards

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+15&version=NIVUK

One of many online commentaries on Rembrandt’s famous painting of this story -

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/r/rembran/painting/biblic3/prodig2.html