Based on a real experience, this is a recollection by. . .


To "Daddy" -- A Nightmare Remembered

Prologue

At twenty brittle years of ragged age
my blood runs cold,
my arms repel
those arms that hold me
love expected
still rejected
thrust into the deepest hell.
Bowels twist and crush
in vain
my every love's attempts to reach and heat
my frigid hate eternal
captured by your stone grey eyes
that still in death,
Daddy,
yours,
still haunt me,
taunt in death
with your dead claws
that scraped my virgin shell apart
that bloodied stain
spilled from my child's
waxen flow
where none should go
not YOU,
Daddy,
strange savage in disguise,
dead craven
with dead eyes
that first attacked me,
only eight. 1

I thought I had forgotten you,
damned beast you are,
who never really left
that day,
that night you died.

My eyes were shut
like shades to block
the light of day
until my love had words to say
that sounded so like words of rote
you, Daddy,
uttered
breathlessly.

My memory regurgitated, abrupt,
those thoughts
left dead with you,
I thought,
until gut-wrenching gasps
hurled vomit, mine,
past kisses
down his throat.

That happened yesterday.

I again dry heave
often
an empty retch
no chunks of vivid bursts
in me to hurl
the last
gone with my love
his hungry mouth
too full of me
instead of mine with him.

This happens every day
I try to love a man in love with me,
he thinks,
until
closed tight my eyes to shut you out
from my fatherless memory,
Daddy,
you,
no father real of mine,
return.

Life stinks!

2

Remember,
a dozen years ago
I learned to love like you --
twelve years remembered --
taught by you, not to love,
just what to do
not with
but to you --
things you loved me do
but which I hate now,
did then, to you —
Mister,
and I am different for the experience
because, even now, I hesitate —
and they who really care now don't debate;
they leave me one by one – not one can wait
for me to overcome that horrid date
what happened just a dozen years ago by you,
Mister, when I was young,
too young -- you knew,
and still you did what you wanted to –
leave your ego satisfied.

I'd rather to have quickly died!

But, it's too late.

Then, I was eight.


3

You often came to me
in the night
to give a little hug
and longer good night kiss
but
when I closed my eyes,

I saw you leave
and wiped away the spit
you left behind
still clinging to my
still quivering lips
where your calloused, thick tongue –
snake-like split --
pried both of them apart –
my scared but angry mouth,
my scarred, torn, sacred youth.

On top of me
your pounding flesh and pounding heart
pressed relentlessly.

You never left —
those languid, steamy nights –-
your stinking adult sweat
drenched my sheets, pillow case –
your sticky semen dripping
from my crinkled lace.

You stand just watching in the shadows -
a frozen smirk
carved on your wrinkled face —
knowing nothing I could say
would stop your coming
any other day
or night
into my private room, too late
to stop you—coming –
in my private doom
watch you masturbate
myself unwilling to cooperate
not knowing why or how
you captured my reluctant heart
and trampled it beneath your feet and hands
defiling every part of me
fulfilling what your filth demands
each torrid day, each restless night
for twelve long years since on that date
you killed my life when I was eight.

4

When evening turned to night from darkest day,
I knew the constant terror
would repeat itself
so long as you,
Mister,
called yourself my Daddy, dear,
though we both knew it wasn't true–
that you were husband
and a father, too,
to someone else, a wife who thought you dear,
and your own son, my age, I think, or near
enough that I should wonder why
you needed me at all to do
what frightens me but pleases you,
or if you spread that child's legs as well
to put him through this senseless hell
that leaves me nightly nude and numb
shorn of my virtue, left unsaved
for whom I wanted to succumb
one future day
in marital passion, conjugal bliss,
my love, my dear, innocent, intact;
but you, with Daddy locked on your lips,
rough fingers on my thighs and hips,
my door ajar and window cracked
a bit to let air in as you let out
some pants less gasses,
panting gasps,
YOU,
not I,
fulfilled without a doubt.

I felt the flow as you ejaculate
upon my untried body, let it out,
yes, let it slip – let fluid seep –
you loose the grip you cannot keep --
I lose my self in pretend sleep.

You watch my tears flow,
salty, sweaty, silent fear
overwhelming me , blow by blow –
(you'll never know how every breath
prayed these twelve years your certain death
would free me from the chains that fate
condemned and bound me,
locked tight around me)
hammered by your anvil fist,
too young and useless to resist
when I was eight.

5.

But they continued, grim display
for ten years since that horrid day
when first you leered
since when you sneered
at family, friends, but not your id --
the secrets of your life you hid
from children and your simple wife
who looked the other way
and let you in your fantasy play
while thinking all the while,
"Don't touch that kid!"
But, Daddy, dear,
you did,
and now you've paid
a decade deep in debt –
you're lying here
for lying there
dead
the eyes wide open in your head
screaming, "HELP!" to me.

I left for regions far away
ten years ago, ten years today,
and hoped you had forgotten
who I was and what I did – and didn't do -- for you,
Mister,
who thought, by saying "Daddy" I would quit
withstanding
understanding
that all your love was lust for me;
but, now, I know far better, Sir,
that those games of your fantasy
were nothing what you said they were.

Here, mother living all alone,
I visiting,
she, stagnant, sterile,
sits inert by window sill
beholding nothing sure
since her husband,
my real Daddy died,
and you emerged with proper form,
indeed,
sprung forth like sudden summer storm,
a seed
of evil surging from your cursèd will.

You should have fled,
as I did;
you should have died,
as I did.

But, you didn't,
be damned your soul to hell,
because you killed me,
took the life that's mine,
abused and used me
as your concubine,
and warned me not to tell.
I couldn't,
and no one ever knew but you and me
about your dark depravity.

6

Your image filled again that ancient hall
and loomed before me years ago, and now,
I'm older, though – you can't recall
how young I was back then, nor how
you could maneuver and manipulate
me, then an innocent child of eight.

But, you tried again, as many times before,
and failed to reach me
failed to breach my
barricade
nor break my morals any more.

You kept your distance, tried enticing,
pleas and promises, all too late.

While stroking blindly
thunder struck
and stopped abruptly
stiffened limbs
mid-thrust, mid-stroke, arhythmically,
it stopped, at last that frigid heart,
that coldly violated me
twelve years ago, this very date,
when I was just a girl of eight.

I cannot move
from this same room
where my hot tears had washed the floor,
had splashed the door
you closed –
cannot help you holding out your cramping hands
with pubic hair stuck to the sweaty seams
it seems,
fresh semen clinging to the flaccid tip
belt cleaving far below the hip
unzipped, sagging to the knees,
your vacant stare still begging, "PLEASE,
help me! my heart "
but, now, there was no part
of me to hear or help you–
nothing that I want to do.

I let you crumple to the floor, dying
and smiled wanly, lying
the first time in so many years
that I cared,
and waited for so many tears for you to die,
like this, your hands full
of yourself instead of me –
and I smiled, broadly–
could not help but say out loud,
"Thank GOD you're gone,
killed by your sin
and I am free. At last, I win."

A dozen years ago, till now, with hate
I lived and died, since I was eight.

I don't look back upon your dead remains --
your rotting corpse.
I walk away
with hope one day –
one night,
those memories will die,
and I --
and I will finally LIVE!




Poetry by NotaDeadPoet
Read 1458 times
Written on 2006-12-10 at 17:49

Tags Justice  Abuse 

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Teala
Wow, I have chills. This dark, raw, emotional piece is truly moving, and haunting.
2006-12-15


Rob Graber
"Thank GOD you're gone,
killed by your sin
and I am free. At last, I win.":

Quite a climax to a horrible tale...
2006-12-10


Chris Fernie
Dear Notadeadpoet,

This is a moving piece of sustained writing, a truly confessional experience. For myself, it has echoes of Sylvia Plaths's poem, also called 'Daddy, in which she regaled her own father for having betrayed her.

A memorable reading event, though painful to absorb.


With best wishes,

Chris
2006-12-10



A hard and a amazing write NADP, I am so glad the narrator broke free of the abuser at last. His ending was a just one. To live on and live well is the just ending of the victim in my eyes.

We have to fight for our right to say goodbye to such cruelty of past experience, or allow those memories to ruin our all. I see these are real experiences, as the detail and imagery would suggest to me anyway, in which case the expression of such work will be of great benefit to all involved. Even some men or women out there who may think in these evil terms. To know the horror they perpetrate, may save some child from a similar experience. It is a hidden and big problem that needs airing and you have done it brilliantly, I take my hat off to you, Tai
2006-12-10

Texts




Out of the Closet, Into the Woods
by NotaDeadPoet