UPDATE (SEE BELOW)
None of this has changed except my guilt at not being good enough for my son.
There’s no surprise my two older kids have no real place for me in their lives. I don’t deserve a place because, in retrospect, when I was younger, I made bad decisions that impacted them, decisions I now understand but it’s too late to change what’s done. As Hannah Gadsby’s Gran used to say ‘it’s all part of the soup, too late to take the onions out now.’
That’s right, Gran.
My youngest daughter?
I did a good job parenting in difficult circumstances but that’s gone too. Not sure how I became the villain there but that’s what I am.
In this post I write that I hope my youngest will respect my service, but I’ve moved on from that strangely visceral hope. It doesn’t matter, I’ve realised, whether he does or not because I’ve accepted that he loves me regardless. He loves me irrespective of whether society has bestowed hero status on my acts of self-preservation, irrespective of any prowess I may have ever shown at anything, he just loves me – and it’s the greatest thing yet it scares the shit out of me too. In a world that says you need to earn what you get; I have this treasure that just is.
Nothing is better than that.
Nothing.
As the song says ‘I know what love is’ – yes, there’s always a song.
ORIGINAL POST:
I wrote this poem for my Dad, and for me, a couple of years ago.
I feel I can republish it here, today, because over the past two weeks I have unfriended and blocked the half dozen or so people I had become afraid to share anything of myself with, afraid of their judgement of everything I do and am.
He served.
I served.
It feels like I’ve never stopped serving – guilt, maybe, for never having been good enough?
My whanau has endlessly produced soldiers who passing Time has turned into warriors and eventually into heroes. We were never heroes, just shit-scared kids conned into believing we could save the world, a world our collective efforts conspired to produce, and promote, a monster like Trump and his terrifying protégés.
So, from the beach at Gallipoli, the trenches of the Somme, the sands of Al Alamein, the mud of Khe San, and now Iraq and Afghanistan, we who fought and died, we ANZACs, stand silent in our shame because, what we did has produced only a legacy of cosmic failure, of misery, of the killing of innocents, unbearable pain and grief, and is nothing worthy of celebration – or even commemoration.
Yet you will commemorate, but I will not join you.
I will, instead, think of my wonderful Dad, the man I’ve tried, in my frightened and pathetic way, to memorialize in these words. The man I loved, and who loved me, and who I never gave his just dues in his lifetime. I don’t care if you despise my words – or even my life – because it is what it is, and no amount of apology can make it any more, or less, worthy than it is. Just more white trash gone to war.
My father seldom wore his medals and I have never worn mine. I’m respectful of his, less so of mine, but somehow, I hope my beloved youngest son will understand in ways I never did, the futility of this sort of sacrifice. Maybe, one day, he’ll be able to look at my ‘service’ and find some small seed of respect for me buried in those cold, humourless symbols, those dull strips of tatty ribbon, and understand, in his own way, that I tried my best to be a person he could love, and, maybe, in some small way, admire. I hope so anyway, and that hope, at least, will keep me going to my end.
‘Too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart’. WB Yeats, ‘Easter 1916’.
For 10486 Pvt John Walker Matheson
The old man sat
In that room of his
In that chair of his
And he must have thought
‘What the fuck was that all about?’
Maybe not in those words
As he didn’t use those words
Not in front of my mother
Sitting
Knitting
Or doing a crossword across from him
In her chair
Never a cross word, eh?
Not in front of my mother
Who birthed
This new generation of killer
Not in front of my mother
Who rather liked
The thought
Of
Her men
Soldiering
Soldiering on
I didn’t think of him
That day
Or them
I seldom thought of them
I did think
What the fuck is this all about?’
But this was probably
Janet
Or Desiree
Gillian …
Or some such throbbing of the heart
That momentary sanguine burst that says
I am still alive
And there is
Fat in the old boy yet
But
I did think of you today
You
With your cattle-prod defences
Guarding
Your raw heart
That immune heart
That even
Your cold public stare
Cannot
Protect
I see
Those eyes that smile
When time makes mockery of sweat and grunt
And we touch
Hand holding hand holding hand
That
Fleeting
Time
I live for
Once
On leave
I looked
(And I still remember this)
Through my William Calley eyes
Saw my kit in the corner
Leaning at that cranky angle
(Must straighten that, must always be straight)
Of some bedroom
In some squalid squat
In
Vogeltown
And my shirt
(fuck, it’s creased)
Creased in my speed to get one away
To get this one away
Like it was the last slice of the loaf
The last chip off the old block
That last cab off the rank
The Last Post
I saw
I saw
Black patches
Ominous black
Above the wings on the sleeves
And that one hook
Black patches
I grew up with
Sitting on the edge of this bed
Now
My father’s bed
Then
Can this really be called
Grown up
When I put on where he took off
These shoulder flashes
That
Shout
On Active Service
‘New Zealand’
There is a bugle
Playing at Lone Pine
Today
As there was that day
And the day
The Stuka
Flying low
Strafed the wadi
And got my old man
Now
(Remembering)
I look
At that dark mass of fortified detritus
All that kit
Leaning
Rakish
In the shadow of my
L1A1 Self Loading Rifle
My SLR
(Special issue)
The
Weapon
I swore I would never carry
That one time
I swore that oath
I would be killed
But
I would not kill
And lay down
In front of the President’s car
That was then
I said that then
I said that then
But not today
Today
I will ship out with my mates
2nd Battalion, Taranaki Regiment
NZAF
(Proud, bro)
Today I will go and fight
Chase chickenhawks
Taste burnt flesh
Wipe up shit
Drink hot blood
In
This Man’s War
In
‘Nam
In
Vietnam
History is screaming
Cheeks aching in sleep
From crying
In rage
For God, for Queen and for country
Aue!
What country?
What God?
What fucking Queen?
And the old man sitting in his chair
Torn
Between
Pride in his son
(who he knew wasn’t quite right in the head)
Are you a homo, son?
It’s OK if you are.
You’ll still be my son
All the same
Tears
Ripping the gut
(like today’s tears)
Seppuku
Ritual
White
Hot
Tears
But you can’t come out for me, Dad
I have 30 years to wait for that
My already life
Over again
And
Homo?
Yes
But not as we know it
Dad
Not as we know it
Torn between this
And
That
You survived broken
And me?
I could not think of that
Then or now
I could not think of the small entry wound
The gone back of the skull
That hole
You could put your fist in
I worked with the living
Preserved life
Saved the chickenhawkers
From a fate
Worse than
Worse than
Life?
I could not conceive
Of death’s mashed tabernacle
My own
Sepulcre
Shrouded
In
A
Molecular
Mist
Of
My own
Blood
At Khe Sanh
At Con Thien
At Kim Son Valley
Or
On
Some lost
LZ
Near Home
I stand up
Dress
Look at her
Emotionless
Like a dead sheep in the bed
Tousled and shorn
Blood caked on her back
In strips like nails would make
I feel nothing
For her
For my father
Or for me
(Strangely nothing for the old Queen, neither)
Yet
Time has stripped this old wall of its flaked paint
(Flaked ~ now there’s a word)
And I think of you
You
In your old chair
In that pristine bed in Christchurch Hospital
At St Mary’s in Hamner
Where you went mad and they jolted your sweet head
With electricity
I see you
In that wadi leaking blood like scarlet air
I hear the whine and the crump
From the plane that will nail you
I smell the burnt flesh
(I have at least smelt that myself)
And the vomit
I see you
Dillingeresque in the desert
Handsome as Valentino
I see myself
Uniformed
Braced
Spit polished
On parade
Shit scared
Always
Shit
Scared
I see myself
Like you
Behind bars at Lake Alice
Now
I feel the cameraderie we never had
That I would not allow
But it’s a bit fucking late for you
You see, old man
You see
All along
I was on this journey
This blind journey
And
Here I am
Whakawahine
Dad, I proved myself the man
I was not meant to be
And I don’t need these patches
These black flashes
To make you proud, Dad
I know that now and know I never did
I am your child
Your girl child
I am the world’s child
I am a daughter of the sun and rain
The daughter of the mist
On Mount Fuji
I am of your lineage
And I am so proud
I stand with you in our place
Our turangawaewae
And I am so proud
I hold your hand
As I did when I was your child
We cross the road
You keep me safe
My eyes awash with tears
You kiss my face
Kiss them away
Now
As you did then
And it rains
It rains
Forever
On this, crazy, love-drained morning
The memorials fade
There is silence
As I remember you
Silence
And I remember you.
dykiegirl 