in my father's house (a sestina)

[wingsofadove]

in my father's house

my father put on a shirt and disappeared
into his wife's domesticated but dark
idea of how a man should never cast wishes to the wind
or throw his life away on useless night
dreams, pipe-dreams that would only add years
to his face that he could never get back.

he spent days with sweat sliding down his back
seeping into frayed fruit-of-the-looms that disappeared
in soot-black water for some thirty-odd years
of yes-sirs and no-sirs in dingy-dark
buildings with improper ventilation day or night,
yet he was never too tired to throw caution to the wind

or tell stories of younger days of riding dreams like the wind
to ends of rainbows or trailing nightmares to hell and back.
but IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE during the blue-space of night
when the sound of his snoring steadily disappeared
through walls of sleep and the closet monsters of the dark
took a back seat to miscellaneous boyfriends over the years,

i would lie in bed and think of how the years
had not diminished his need to cast wishes to the wind
or how the sound of his zippo clicking in the dark
and the smell of lighter fluid would quickly bring back
the proof of his existence even though he disappeared
in his wife's presence in the cloud behind her night

eyes that said NO to his unspoken question of the night
IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE. for so many of those years
i watched in angry silence as his importance disappeared
and in my 29th year i saw his passion dissolve in the wind
swept away with the onset of winter. life turned its back
on him and i felt more than saw his acceptance of the dark.

i knew then, that IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE, my own fear of the dark
was just an excuse to hold on, that the demons of the night
would eventually disperse even though he'd never come back.
the father-daughter void has grown smaller with the years
and i have learned that it's okay to challenge the wind
to fight nightmares with father-thoughts that have not disappeared

(as my mother's husband disappeared) with his acceptance of the dark.
i have learned to close off the wind to the blue-black night
and to hide years of failure in the back of a frame.

[heinzs]

Some very dark undertones in this... amazing use of the form.

[heinzs]

I'm surprised no one else has commented on this. I'm moving it to "forms in poetry" forum.

[psychotic pretender]

dark, but beautiful

it grabs you and drags you into that place, you can almost smell that lighter fluid

excellent write, excellent read