Weeds

Originally posted 12/29/2012. Original title: “Pull It Up”

From the place
I buried them
I shall pull up the cocaine
and the late night breakfasts
that never stayed with me
for longer than it took
to get in the car
and get moving,
drunk and wired,
toward whatever couch
was that morning’s home;
shall pull up
the little empty gun
I got in trade
for all that acid;
shall pull up the skinny tie
and the hospital scrubs,
the songs I wrote
when bored,
the awful poetry
I believed in so hard
even when
there was no evidence
for its quality,
no reason for it
to exist at all;
shall pull up the arrogant
know it all
callous boy
ready to screw
whoever was up for it;
shall pull up that boy,
that still-skinny boy
not yet tending toward heft;
that stupid young man
with a bad car,
a jammed tapedeck,
an inability to love
and be loyal
if there was a road
on which to run
and someone’s words
he could steal.
That past
is a thicket of weeds now;
pull it all up, toss it
onto the hot pavement,
let it dry down to dust
and blow away or wash away
in the next strong storm.
If the child
is father to the man,
let me make myself
an orphan before you
get one inch closer;
don’t call it foolish
don’t call it impossible
or unnecessary. You
didn’t know him;
if I can help it,
you never will,
even if I have to scorch
the earth for miles around
to make that so.