I stand outside
because I cannot go inside.

My mum has run out of love to give me.
If I desire so much to be purple

I could as well plant my own flowers.
Look at me outshining my country:

I didn’t kill a moth because it startled me.
I took it to a city of flowers,

wished upon its wings,
set them up against the wind,

from where my answers would soon come.
Before a begrudged audience,

I admitted am not a good man. I am selfish.
I have my father’s dentition, his regalia of shame.

Neither cheesing nor sadness can save me.
I smile, & the people who love me

are disappointed. How is it a dead man,
instead of laying still in his sleep, still

chooses to haunt us with his mistake?
They look at me, & it is not them who hurt.

It is the vase I filled with my love, hoping it
was everything my hibiscus needed to thrive.

I did not start a war I knew would be lost.
I took my kitten to the vet, read it the 1st Amendment.

I did not send a man to the moon to masturbate.
Bet, I dug my father out of his grave to mock him.

I did not evade tax.
I drank with a politician.

I poisoned myself to get rid of my father.
I am not a good man.

I’d sell my country for crumbs
if I ever had to protest for anything.

I am not a good man.
I sent a man to the moon in prose,

denied him in poetry. If I sent my father
flowers right in time for father’s day,

would they grow to obscure his memory of me,
or would their fragrance extinguish what is dead,

& set me free? I am a good man.
I made a man die for me, on the moon.