To Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg, you are not my father.
But if you were, you would rise before me
to handle the wood and the stove and the heat.
Allen Ginsberg, you are not my father.
But if you were, you would make your coffee first,
forget Columbia. You would smoke your cigarettes
through the morning waiting for me to wake.
Allen Ginsberg, you are not my father.
But if you were, you would brood,
you would be unable to be any other man.
You are not my father Allen Ginsberg!
Do not pretend, because you were able
to walk the streets of New York
and my father would never do such a thing.
Mr. Ginsberg, I will not dignify your fakery
by writing about you while I write about my father.
How dare you, from the grave, tempt me with lies.
You, Allen, you are not my America
or my Russia or my Supermarket.
Maybe you are my green Valentine
but even that does not give you the right to be my father.
You do not have a full head of black curly hair.
You are bald and you are a Jew.
You are not Episcopalian.
As far as I know, Allen, you never taught children
to add the numbers.
Allen, have you ever fished at dawn?
I hate you Allen Ginsberg.
You, who found targets for your disgust,
writing books to line your shelves,
hobnobbing with the unprofessed elite.
You, who held in your mind the greatness of the greats
and the beats of mockery always in your mouth.
You should thank communism.
My father never would,
so stop pretending to be him.
I bet you never ate oatmeal cookies or painted with oils.
Did you ever hide things in the attic?
Did you ever change the entrance of your home,
make it face North rather than West,
and then chain it off so no one could pass?
You never did that Allen Ginsberg.
You never chained off the entrance to your home.
Do not boast that you did, you who hides his arrogance
in his humility, his humility in his arrogance.
Stand up Allen Ginsberg, don’t hide behind your art!
You are not my father, though your skin lacks color
and you are decomposed like him.
Stand up dead coward and admit that
you never cooked chicken Parmesan.
Say it.
Say it, Allen.
Look me in the eye, tell me straight,
you never wanted to kill yourself any more than my father did.
You never left your family, never married a child.
No, you sly thing, you liked the boys,
as if I couldn’t see through that,
as if I couldn’t see that you wished to knit like my father.
You wished you could stroll the modern-day five-and-dimes
searching for cheap acrylic wools,
only to make blankets for people
you couldn’t love any other way.
Allen Ginsberg, you tried to hide from me your entire life,
tried to pretend to be my father without fathering me.
Thought I wouldn’t notice your game
because you loved yourself enough,
because they honored you at your death.
Ahhhhh, now I’ve got you.
that’s how I figured it all out,
that’s how I caught you.
After all your false identifying,
they honored you with reprints and photos and essays.
It gave you away Allen.
I’m bright enough to see the writing on the wall.
As some strange family gathered in Freehold, New Jersey,
the vulture grave diggers waiting to seal the tomb,
no one uttered your name Allen,
and my father had defeated you.
He beat you at your own game,
the ultimate expression of anger and love.
He left behind his coffee pot and wallet,
his slacks and model airplanes,
his guns and all his knitting.
It had all seemed useful hours before.
Now the weight of each item, increased tenfold,
is helping that house, with the chained off entrance facing North, to sink.
Oh, oh, now my head’s spinning
and now, Allen, maybe you’re seeing through me,
now that you’re paying attention,
afraid that maybe I am significant
or maybe you’ll find a poem in me
or no poem at all.
But now you’re paying attention to me
because you’ve defeated me.
You never did want to be my father,
you were always too busy,
you were always writing.
You never did want to watch me
sit patiently in the pond water
trying to catch small fish.
Do you agree that you never wanted anything to do with me?
Certainly, you never wanted to marry my mother!
Allen Ginsberg, you are not my father.
But if you were, you would rise before me
to handle the wood and the stove and the heat.
You would make your coffee first,
forget Columbia. You would smoke your cigarettes
through the morning, waiting for me to wake.