Paterfamilias

Tathagata Banerjee

 

In the end, there was only blood.

And hidden memoirs that was sharp like a knife

In the end, it was words that told illusions apart from lived reality

And I’ve known long enough the identity of my assassin

And yet Freud told story of men and only men

I and Plath and Luke Skywalker knew it all

All, all along

And we hunted down scary last names

That looked like mirror and cut like one

In the end there was only blood.

And I’ve read every last detail of handed down curse

The sins that sons of fathers carry

His hungry naked power of a primordial dwarf

Play pretend shadow monster

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf…

I’ve known it way too long.

Way too much.

His Heinrich hand all over the map and history

Of fictional masculinity and made up binary

The devil is in the patriarchal details

And yet Freud wrote of men and only men

In the end there was only blood.

And when my assassin delivered the final blow

 

I hurled to him my greatest insult

My weapon… My curse

I called him, “Father!”