Songs From My Father

From a being so terrifying, yet at the same time so fragile, so prepared yet at the same time so wary, what I inherited is felt as a certain fearlessness, petrified by itself as in the relationship between arms and stride on a balance beam when walking is no longer controlled falling but suppressed flying and if you ever glance down at what your feet are doing, their private dance steps, they stop cooperating. More mildly put, I am very superstitious, I am in a stupor of my own risks/of my own cautionrituals, I scoff unconditionally, love uncompromisingly, I will stop at nothing, for certain(ness), but when I'm done, I'm done, more at through, even as the beam goes on––
I didn't see
Jimmy's Funeral,
Jimmy's my father
I missed
my dad's funeral
Jimmy's my dad
I didn't seize the 'was' coming
My father was Jimmy, dad,
was weeping so frankly it came like gazing had

But I had to celebrate
I had to promise fate a celebration in a promised land I didn't attend
Ceremonies, symbolic acknowledgement of birth, death, togetherness, are supposed signal comprehension of these events (while at the same time the ceremonies are bodies meta, they produce the very activities they commemorate)
I didn't want to lie, I did not understand, nor did I want to participate in the invention of an ending
Completion is my biggest fear, as a concept related to natural events
It makes more sense when you have products to sell
Which reminds me
My father was a product and he knew how to sell, people paid money to watch him pop
People paid morals to hear his soul, (eavesdroppers) (obstacle course wanna bes) (wonderful people) (heroes)

Him and me, we sat in our giant van outside the market sharing a carton of lavender berries. When I first learned the word burial I tasted those pale omens, catacresis (sounding out the flavor of then and there– , paved my arms into the crescent air of his departure and bowed forward

I had to mourn
This has to be the happiest morning he ever sent me
And tomorrow too