A Poem by John Kross

Dead Bones Don't Die

 

The skeletons my father keeps in his closet
are not my own,
those bones would be far too obvious.
The demons he fought I've put in the ground,
the bones his daddy gave him,
the ones I said would not be mine.

But dead bones don’t die,
at least the bones that pass from fathers to sons,
instead they fester and stew
and boil below the surface
where barely a sound is heard.
Meanwhile my boys are busy digging them up.

Its true
boys tend to dig and get dirty;
my boys dig up bones
and drum them on my door.

I worked so hard to break the cycle,
to raise my boys without the pain,
to protect their fragile hearts from heartache,

I kept telling myself to keep the dead dead,
but its hard to do when the dead don't really die,
instead they lie about the absence of pain,
the pain I knew so well,
the fear that motivated me to be something more,
to push myself beyond
what I thought I could be,
to a place where I might be a man.

But here at the end
my boys are still boys drumming up bones,
no fear, they expect the world to be easy.

I have learned that fear can be a great motivator.
It worked for me
but not my boys
I never gave them anything to fear.
I gave them boats with oars
and straw to make brick
and lots of love and plenty of hugs
and always told them I was proud of them

but I never gave them fear.

Now my boys fear nothing
but expect everything

dead bones don't die

they just look different

John Kross is an aspiring poet working and living in Dallas,Texas. He has been published here several times before in 2012 and 2013 including the 2012  best of antholgy "Storm Cycle". You can read more from him under the pen name "V" at www.hellopoetry.com