UNWASHED
Copyright 2013 Gordon Kuhn
All Rights Reserved

”I am an angry man!”
He said to me.
“I am in a rage!
I burn inside!
Memories of painful events,
Unwashed from my soul cry out.
Every day, every day, every day!
From here to a country distant traveled,
To the taste of war,
To the love of war,
The taste of blood in my mouth.
To a mountain with scattered body parts.
The shouts of joy and of sin and of fear.
They live within and,
Unwashed from my soul cry out.
The parent beating their spouse,
Blackened eyes, bloodied nose.
Be a man. It is what men do.
You aren’t a man unless….
Holes in the drywall
And in the doors.
Fist marks left there.
Where is the model?
Not here. Not there.
The drunk in the gutter there,
Lies in a pool of rain water.
Heaving puke in a toilet bowl.
Sleeping on the floor.
Trying to love and
Failing at such a simple task.
Trying to learn to love,
Trying to fit in,
To be like him, like them, those over there.
To be someone—I will never be.
And yet—I am unwashed and—my soul cries out
Where is the child? What happened to him?
When did fun stop and the question of what is fun began?
When did the realization that a puppy tossed in a river
Tossed in with a rope and rock tied about its neck
Tossed in and left to die in the cold and dark
Was simply—in the end—really me?”