| Some nights, I kill my lonliness with a glass of sweet tea with crushed ice, and it makes all the difference, the tea, a c.d., and conversation with my great-grandmother at five in the morning...who doesn't sleep enough, but does sleep more than she claims. I often wonder if this is where I'm supposed to be at this point in my life. I think, maybe, it is. I am truly the son of my mother and my father. I am my mother's bad attempt at poetry, in their longings finally flesh, blood, and breath. I am her poem...which she so desperately strives to love without contempt, to be proud without revision. And disjointly, inescapably, I am my fathers biting wit and lonesome strength. These incompatibilities have sometimes made of me some ironic jest and at others still a young man with a gift for indentifying and at times becoming one with the passion, lovliness and even the broken, unredeemed pain in the world. I dream of redemption. I hope in the end, that they are both proud of me in their own ways. love, michael |
