Someone pulled out my son
from the child he was,
the cute, cherubic boy,
with curled, blond hair,
the eyes of a playful squirrel,
and the laugh
that made the anger sound
like a bad joke
Someone reeled him out ,
stretched him out
into a man,
who smells like a man,
walks like a man,
talks like a man,
laughs like a man,
is boring and strong,
like a man
That someone,
or someone else
forgot about me,
left me the same,
young and frail and vain,
a prisoner of the youth’s
4 “i”-repressibles:
impressible,
irresponsible,
irreconcilable,
irreverent
Looking at people
and seeing no one,
looking at things
and seeing too many,
deaf to the past, blind to the future,
drowned in the present
And here I’m walking the stone path
in the green, lush park
of my paternity,
with my son beside me
his hand in my hand,
not paying attention to his questions,
because they are so many,
so childishly complicated,
“daddy, why is the sky blue then black then blue again?”
“daddy, why are the trees green? I like more yellow trees, or blue!”
“daddy, where do the people go after they die?”
and
wishing I could tell him something else than
“no clue” or “don’t know” or “uh-hmm”
and think something else than
“give me a break, kiddo”
but I am so young,
and so full of my inner voice,
listening to it only,
so full of my own portrait,
looking at it only,
the rest of the world crammed in me,
stashed in the corridors unoccupied by me,
still having enough space
to host
the rest of the universe.
And that’s okay,
it feels good,
to be young, and have a young child,
cut through the young forest
of trees of life
still in bud,
step on its carpet of moss
made of dreams unconsumed,
drink in the morning dew of the lake,
inhale the breathe
of the day ahead,
ignore my son’s questions,
because l have enough time
to answer his serious questions
Which will never come,
because my son has grown too quickly
into a man
and he’s not hanging of my hand,
he’s not even near in sight
Nobody pulled me out from my own self
to reel me out,
to stretch me into the old man
I should be,
okay,
I have wrinkles
and my hair receded
and my belly is flabby and my teeth are yellow,
and my nails are cracked and my ideas are outdated,
my tastes out-fashioned,
and my back hurts,
and my eyes are losing their shine,
and my memory gets fade
while I say that it plays tricks to me
and laugh like of a good joke,
but other than that
there’s nothing else
worth to mention
Hey, you,
whoever you are,
wherever you are,
whatever you do,
be a god or a creator or just a lame saltimbanco,
or all of these
together,
you forgot about me
you left me young
and careless to my child’s needs,
oblivious to his questions,
he’s now a grown-up man
and the way the things move
someday he’s going to be older than I am
and I don’t find that
quite normal
