You grew up in a garage plastered
With pornographic images of women,
Your father’s mind shot across the wall,
His depression haunting every single floor
Of the house, the stench of violence, the
Volatile thread, the blasting fuse of his temper,
His cock, his sickness, head under the blanket,
Fists in your face, you felt worthless and you copied
Him without understanding anything about him,
Without knowing that he’s sick, trusting his behaviour,
Thinking it’s right, right to treat the ones closest to him
Like trash, himself, burying himself alive, preaching that
It’s unmanly to get help, and he’d beat up his family instead.
And you walked around the streets with boiling rage and
Aggressions in your explosive gut, projecting the hatred
You nurtured against your father onto the bodies of girls,
Because you thought they should take it, they were the easiest
Target, the mother who put you in that situation, the mother who
Stayed, you thought, guilt, what kind of love was that, co-dependency,
You blamed her, the broken family unity, a dream dying away
In every bedroom, boys you thought were friends you tried to
Impress and imitate, seeking your father’s approval in them,
Bashing girls, learning how to hit them, how to lose it, thinking
They are all the same, worthless like you, nailed to the walls
Like achievements, like punching bags, for cocks, for fury, for demolition.
I looked at these women, the image that had nothing to do anymore
With who they really were. Maybe that had never been the case.
I wondered whether they knew what was happening here.
To them, without their knowledge.
Would they care?
Would he remember their faces even? Years later, after they had been
Replaced with another naked body?
Who were they in this room where cars where stored or fixed?
Where the father exhausted his cock before joining his wife
In bed? The room where birthday celebrations for children were held?
What did you do with that message, that room?
I looked at the women’s faces, the artificial desire,
Making your father believe that they wanted him,
Bit by bit, then and there, in vicious circles that would
Never end until he had enough of them and would dispose
Of them, all of them looking nothing like your mother,
Nothing in common, there were no pictures of her anywhere,
I wondered where she stood in his value system, he purchased
Another magazine, another poster, superimposing her image
With that of spread legs, tits in faces, tongues on nipples.
I remember the mother standing with one foot in the garage,
Her body positioned on the threshold, right next to the images
That kept your father going, and I just couldn’t read her face,
I expected something from her, of course she had been in this
Room a million times before but I waited for her to do something,
Say something, but nothing ever erupted out of her mouth,
They were there, she was there, and when I entered the rest of the
House, I realised that the garage was the only room that represented
The true state of things, the ruins of the family dynamic, in contrast
To the hopes and dreams that the mother desperately held on to
With polished framed photographs, wiped kitchen tables, and ironed clothes
That none of you ever appreciated.
Croque-Melpomene 