Dada's Seed (long version)

1
Before Dada first did me harm
he sat on my bed and stroked

my right leg, the one he would ruin.

I watched his Adam's apple heft the axe
and split his thoughts into sounds.

He let loose hardwood splinters.

They slid beneath my love, attached themselves

to my heart, buried themselves deep,

formed black lumps so that in later life,

whenever I was hugged, a splinter shaped

the responses that escaped my mouth.

 
'My heart,' Dada began, 'you see, or soon will

if you do not already, or if, sadly, your Mam

has failed to warn you, is as black as the inside

of a coffin with the thick lid nailed shut;

made that way when my Da took revenge in the night
for the things done to him, over an apple, long ago.'

A single tear clung to the thick lashes

of his left eye – a mountaineer poised on the cusp

before the advancing avalanche. 'I have to warn you,'

he continued, 'that I am unable to love properly,

I find the touch of your Mam's lips intolerable.'

His nails scratched the skin
beneath my shoulder blades raw while Dada

continued talking. 'Unlike you, my Da
made me sleep in a Hessian sack, would you believe,

and, with Nuncle Pat as his side-kick, threatened

to throw me in a river if I forgot myself and fell asleep.

I'll do no such thing to you,' he said, 'but must
release the hellhounds that gnaw my organs

in a fashion that allows me to keep breathing.

So in fairness and in warning, my scion, and to ease

the hammer that thunked the flesh inside my chest,

in three days time, I shall begin to hurt you.'

Dada wept several tears. I watched them

slide down his cheeks then lost them in the stubble

and shadow of his chin and throat.

He said,  'I would like

to be brave but find it easier to send
you down into the darkness
than to make the difficult journey myself.'

 2
Three days I waited.

I felt walls crouch close

and nip at the air before it passed my lips.

Three days I waited.

I forced myself to sleep with an eye open

and my hands placed firmly between my legs.

Three days later he began on my leg.

He manacled my arms to the bed,

pulled back the sheet and took hold of the leg

where it stuck out of my pajama pants.

His left hand held it firm. His right hand

grasped the arch of my foot.

As he sung Goodnight Irene he began to twist 

until first the ankle cracked and then the knee was ruined.

He revisited that leg every night for forty nights.

I fought, sought pity, thrashed - a fish

trapped in a plastic bucket, swimming in pain -
the bones crushed and re-crushed
until marrow escaped, muscle fled and the leg, from
the knee and all below, flopped and puddled

beneath the thigh, the colour and consistency of porridge.

Next he fed me the flesh carved from the back of Mam.

He cut the meat into thin strips, sautéed in peanut butter,

skewered and fed to me with bowls of Basmati rice

and gentle green tea. If I vomited

he returned to the kitchen. I heard my Mam's screams

and then he brought me a fresh batch of meat.

To hold her meat down I bit the pillowslip.

Mother came to me every morning.
Gingerly, she lifted her shirt
and showed me the flesh missing in patches across her back
beneath the tight horizontal strap of her black brassiere.

My teens were spent in Dada's cellar,
fearful of his visits where he would whisper
his love
and pound my spine or pluck single hairs
from my head
or bite the knuckle of my thumb
until it bled.

One night, with pliers, he snipped off

my left hand's little finger.

He told me about a brother I should have had
if Dada had let him live.

3

'That one,' he whispered, his hot breath

forced into my right ear, 'sleeps at the bottom of a river.

I had to, don't you see, rid myself

of the fear of that damn Hessian sack.'

He was the eldest of the two sons born to Dada

and to Mam but he would not see the light,

not after today, his Dada has shoved him

in a hessian sack and, with Nuncle Pat,

to the river they then dragged him.

The Hessian sack’s opening

was tied tight like a white knuckled fist

holding the universe closed

so the big, big bang would

fizzle, splutter and go out.

In the bag the son gripped to the memory

of the brightest sunlight

and tried not to replay over

and again the howling screams

of his poor old tortured Mam:

She who cried and screamed

and beat fists upon Nuncle Pat’s back

and Dada’s head; received back a slap

and a kick and then fell

to the ground uncomforted and defeated.

The son pleaded with his Dada

but this is what he said,

‘Fear not my son, or do, but fear not for long

soon the hessian with breathe in water

and your soft lungs will lose the battle -

I’ll be sad to see you go

but not as sad as the relentless pain

my memories of my own Da bring to me

and so you see, drowning son of mine,

we pass on the pain  - seed to seed,

deed by deed, so adieu then drowning one.’

Nuncle Pat said nought, his lips

miserly pursed, a tally-ho fluttering

as his orange-tinged fingers dug

into the old cat-skin tobacco pouch;

he rolled a fag and, while listening

to Dada, to ash converted it.

The ground tried to hold on to him -

he felt its earthy fingers in every bump and scrape

and knew the water would not be so kind;

it would gently devour him

where the land has only held him upright.

And then he heard his Dada’s voice one final time

as he cried again, ‘good bye my son,’

And Nuncle Pat gave him a favorable kick

and shouted ‘you could have been

the best of the lot of ‘em if only

you had put up a bit more of a fight.’

He felt his body in the sack

lifted high like a leaf upon the wind

and then the movement in the hurl,

his weight briefly abandoned him

until the water and sack collision.

He sunk and it grew darker by the moment

as he was embraced by the cold clammy hands

of water - or was that of death –

spreading across skin, and soon,

he knew, into the very heart of him.

‘Oh my Dada,’ he cried just before the end,

‘this did not have to be, we could have chatted

through your agony and found the grass

on the other side. Oh my Mam

how can you have chosen this man

as the sower of your seeds, could you not see

the future deeds in the shadows of his smile?’

The darkness was all but complete now, the water

wipes the air from his chest, took his life

along with it, he felt it gushing past his toes

and wrinkled, shivering finger tips.

Into the vortex, into the hessian’s oblivion,

into the sound of the river and of maws

of the worms awaiting him

and he wished he could have held the hand

of his babe brother one final time.

4
I wet my mattress at night. During the day I dried it

with the heat that emanated from my frail body.

I coughed up the best years
of my adolescence and spent myself time over

on the soiled, spoiled sheets of that prison bed.

I dreamed of rat breath warming my toes -

the ones I could and could no longer feel –

while bones ached with the memory

of Dada’s touch and the twist to pain

that reverberated still, like lips

waiting to be kissed

or a stomach empty for too long.

At 21 Dada released me.
Mother kissed me. She touched my forehead
with her hand and handed me a crutch
to hobble with.

As a final gesture, Dada pushed me out the door
and shoved me down the steps. He laughed
as I fell and put a front tooth

through the flesh of my bottom lip.

I found employment sitting beside a beach

polishing hermit shells I stole off the crabs
as they wandered the shoreline

beneath the lapping light of the half- moon.

I sold the shells to children, told them
it was not the ocean they could hear

but the cries of crabs lost upon the ocean's dark floor,

seeking their mothers' familiar claws

or fearful of the snip if they encountered their fathers'.

I married a woman who gathered up sand

every evening to turn into glass

and brought her home

to meet the family. Was shocked

when Dada seduced her; he forced

my Mam and I to watch
while he coupled her.

She, I forgave, I knew my worth,

had felt her eyes on my wooden crutch

and felt her body shiver whenever

she touched my ruined leg, but blood

should not be forged into a weapon.

I plucked out my eyes
and threw them at Dada.
He never paused but rushed onwards, faster
than a breached dam.

The dogs barked as he rutted
and when she cried out part of me went missing forever.

I left that place, took my wife,
or, rather, let her take me, her hand

holding mine as she whispered her apology

but all I heard was the whisper of the ocean -

and my wife’s sound towards the end

when my heart fled me - but soon lost her

and never sought to discover

if she went to back to my home,
back to his bed

where I was first brought into existence.

Eventually, months and years diminished

my revulsion and I was drawn north to south.

I slithered over the back fence
and took up residence in the back shed, fed

by my Mam in secret. Blind in the darkness, heartless,

I listened to the dull leather sound as Dada 

beat my Mam. I offered no solace

when she brought me food in the morning.

One night as the stars sat above

and I felt their tears in the silence

that surrounded us I ask my mam

how she could ever have chosen such a man.

‘It was his words, my darling babe, not his statues

made from clay, though the scent of clay on his hands

did excite me, that your Dada used

which undid me and brought me to this place

where you and I sit and stare up

into the darkest pits of humanity.

‘I understand now

what I did not then, that he makes statues from earth

to cement his place for the air and the ocean

unnerve him and we

have become his stars, our light

hurts him

and so your Dada must forever seek

to darken us, to drag us down

to the land of pain and humiliation.’

5

I asked Mam if she

could tell me the story

of Dada’s words

so that I might understand how the world

could come down to this shed

and these are the words

she gave back to me - Dada’s words,

uttered by him when seducing Mam,

and her words, accepting his charm,

and they, together, creating my history.

Even as his fingers unlaced my  dress,

I could sense his hands, browned in earth,

itched to mould damp clay.

While his lips kissed away my fears

his tongue pushed urgently between

to taste my coming screams.’

‘For in the morning,’ he always whispered,

his hands holding my head

still so I could not turn away from them,

‘I shall abandon your sweet nest

‘And as I wrest with memory

to produce an after-image

of your liquid sensuousness my ears,
lost in creation's delight, shall not hear

your voice cry out and my soul,

empty as night, shall devour our final embrace.

‘So one final time, as my fingers trace

our passing along your white spine,

remember this - do nothing,

nothing, but forget me!

‘Do nothing but forget me!

Like the ocean's spray,
let me envelop you, let me caress,

excite and elicit
the secret responses hidden

from common view.

‘I need nothing. I grip nothing.
Everything slips through my fingers.

‘Do nothing, nothing, but forget me,

for though my hands work miracles

the promises I whisper in my need

are as binding as daisy chains

while your hindsight reproaches

wreck havoc upon my innocence.

‘I seek nothing - the discipline is to listen.
The clay sings - the dream is revealed.

‘Everything passes through me!

‘I am nothing.

I take everything.
I slip into ancient warmth

to discover your secrets.
I see into your pain, make it mine.
I feel your heat beat, match it, change it,
lead it down sodden paths once hidden from all.

‘There is no safety, no logical progression,

no calm expression, there is only this,

this tempestuous unearthing,
this explosion of fragments and hidden meanings,
this collision of myths and insights

as muscles and tendons
lose conscious direction, strip back the layers
to reveal visions –

the melting pot is stirred to action.

So you could not leave Mam,

but surely you saw the end before it began?’

With each tired movement I struggled

against the growing current and found

in the end I had the strength to save myself.

Nor to save me, mam,

no my brother drowned.

It words captured me son;

Dada’s words were a net I could not escape,

I was the fish hauled towards the light

knowing death waited in that embrace.

As thick reeds caught hold and threatened

to drag me under - only the scent of the clay

and his watering words brought relief!

‘Thoughts unbound fly in the face of protection -
a hard, wet slap to force clay into shape.
Thoughts fill my hands, fingers stab the clay,
become sharp knives to slice the morals

off stiff upper lips and hypocritical redemptions.

‘I am not redeemable!
I float, lost and passionately angry, in the space
between acts inconceivable. I caress,

I force, I manipulate and the clay breathes,

exists in shimmering propinquity to that which is!

‘Sometimes my ecstasy dominates, a storm,

a raging wind rending roots and leaves impenetrable

as I struggle to find an escape from the fire

that burns deep inside my chest - then beware! Beware!

‘For though my flesh may seek your embrace
my thoughts lie elsewhere and my hands,

as they dip into your lavic heat,

already ache for the clay's cool touch.

‘I need nothing.

I grip nothing.

I take everything.

‘While my words seduce

my eyes appraise;
I take what lies hidden

and follow the inspiration.

‘Sometimes I long for you.

Sometimes I even love you
but darkly, secretly, sometimes

I wish badly for you
and my fingers wriggle like snakes

spitting venom in The Gorgon's hair,

seeking a return to the clay’s lair.

I wished him to be gone, my son,

on more than one occasion, to be

gone from that time and place!

I wished for more, for less, for difference!

But only sometimes… Then his words

preceded by the scent of the earth,

would begin to drop upon me, like rain

falling on the rock to produce the gully.

‘Sometimes I gentle flesh,

I caress and softly seek the recesses of delight.

Sometimes I erupt
to rend a vision physically unto existence.

‘Come my sweetling,

my sparrow,

my sacrifice,
come seek my arms, my loins,

my embrace.

‘Discover that though the flesh

may sate
and separate,

the passion that compels us
can invest us with a truth

so vast everyone is touched.’

We sat for a time, my Mam and me

and the ghost of our brother too,

I think, breathing

in the darkness of the shed,

dreading the dawn of the day

and Dada’s next step.

6

Soft the old web

as an overhang is pushed back.

It touches the face,

a fading kiss from the beast.

The branch swings back, the path

revealed in drips of water

collected in puddles from footprints

of previous passer-byes.

In the distance, the hungry deep-throated buzz

(locusts singing up a feast), from the road

we move towards.

Dada led.

Dada always led.

Mam followed and copped the webs,

Branches, drips and the leeches

that waited between drinks like hobos,

patient and always thirsty

until bloated and fall

to await the next passing drink.

The garden around the shed

is alive with the squawks of birds

who mirror my thoughts.

I want

to push past Dada and find

my own way

but his confidence unnerves me.

Our relationship bears the marks

of hunter and prey.

Dada,

let me go on without you.

Let the hurts

shrink like the hills

behind, let them become shrouded

like Mam’s eyes.

Must you always win

Dada?

Must this son

bide in shadow

until I assume the role

of parent?

Where is my time in the spring sun,

free to gambol

to waste energy the way the meadow

unleashes itself in dazzling colour,

swift to pass and memorable?

Summer, stoic and bearable

must come soon enough -

is there a reason to rush toward it?

Dada,

let me be.’

And then in jest and in anger

I sang a song I called the seven songs of Dada.

‘The first son had an arm

twisted behind his back

until the bone

gave out with a crack, the wrist

splintered, the shoulder

popped loose and the arm

flapped like a turtle fin.

That son lived in a shack

by the beach, collected whole shells,

abandoned by hermit crabs

he spent the dark nights

with the shell held to his ear

imaging the possibilities

of two strong arms.

The second son found his leg

twisted by his Dada

while the other sons sat upon him

and held him still, his Dada

corkscrewed the ankle over and over

to the tune of the second son's screams.

The second son lived in the forest

in the hollowed shell of an old oak

ate acorns by the bushel

and watched the forest animals

scampering in the dawn and dusk

with an undeniable envy.

The third faired no better, this time

an eye was plucked from his face

and fed to the dog for supper

while the third howled in the corner,

his hands covering the hole left behind.

He moved to the city and became a singer

on a street corner, a patch over the hole,

his voice filled the places his face

was unable to place, before him an old hat

captured money for his supper.

The fourth was born in winter

so his father cut off both ears

and fed them to the fire where he heard

them sizzle and splutter

he stayed at home and was happy

to bury his father

though he wept when his Mam

joined him some months later.

The fifth had his back broken

under a pile of lumber

he had crawled under to slumber

He lived happily in a cast

spoon fed by his Mam

and a lovely neighbouring lass.

The six lost his fingers

to his father's welded axe

He went into a home

and stayed their forever.

The seventh was lucky

he died the day he was born.’

And when the song was ended and the tears

slid down my cheeks unable to cure

the pain shivering within

I wished in my heart as it did beat

that I had been the lucky one

and already dead.

 7
Finally I left the shack
and discovered, like others before me,
that the road back is harder still
than the slide into the darkness.

I found a new woman who had three children,
lived with her beside a river,
ate apples every day
and planted their seeds at night. I watered them
with my tears and the gentle stories
I told her children.

My ears heard the laughter
as water scampered across tickling rocks
or the joyful squeals of her children
as she chased them, pretending to be a monster.

I found a large boulder and placed it

upon my own monster. I know

a seed cannot grow without light.

I found, one winter, a son that she gave me

and bit my tongue off while I held him; smelt

the skull that had captured sunshine

and the scent of the deep blue wings of a butterfly.

She stood beside me, her hand

around my shoulder, her lips

painting, with breath, the hairs

of my ears and I thought of my Mam

and the apple trees blossomed

and shed their petals

as gently as death

or love

or snow.