Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Time to move on, methinks, merrily

and without melancholy. The memories

that remain, you can keep.

So much gospel truth now turns and tears

apart the origins of my life.

 

Parsely, sage, rosemary & thyme

If there were a remedy, antidote or

treatment for you, I would not ingest it.

You are poisonous, venomous like the taipan,

though it is guided by instinct for survival;

you seek to soil and profane and contaminate.

 

Remember me to the one who lived there

 

My mother died too soon in life, but

only now am I glad. She fled and escaped

what we must endure. I wish I had died with her.

No. I take that back:

I wish you had died instead.

 

She once was a true love of mine

 

My mother knew and lived love; you lied.

My longing was to be a young version of you,

a good son, to make you proud, always your boy.

That can never be now - how does one excise their parentage?

I am fatherless, fearful and frightened of the future.

 

 

Author's Note

The only thing worse than discovering that one of your children has been molested is discovering that your own father was the perpetrator.

Reviews

[KATHY SUE SILLS]

Wow Jeremy, this was a painful topic to write about and you conquered it with a strong poet hand. Each stanza revealed the aweful affect of abuse by a father to his own child. Painful and sad to read, but excellently written!

[Kat Collins]

Difficult topic to tackle and you did with such mastery. Deeply heartfelt. It is a horrible pain a child has to bear when someone they are supposed to idolize and love tears them asunder. This one will stay with me for some time....

[kmartell]

well this is so revealing and terrible and awful and well written that it is literature in its biggest.

and even to write about this takes courage

[Teri B]

OMG!!! I knew there was anger at a father, but I wouldn't have guessed at the motive without your note! And yes, it is IMMEASURABLY worse when the abuser is someone we should trust and cannot! You have articulated this pain well, my friend, and the use of the song amplifies the hurt and anger...for me, at least!

Well done!

[Lilly Negoi]

there's a series of (maybe accidental) elements here that i mostly liked:
first stanza - in my opinion that is the stanza of the letter M (from Mother, methinks!?...). in the third stanza you say "my mother died too soon in life" - and that, makes me think of how you used the M words early in your poem. and the way you ended the poem with F words - "fatherless, fearful and frightened of the future" - suggesting the impossibility of "excising the parentage" - is wonderful. i don't know if you intended to do so, but you actually made me see how certain things are permanently encrusted within our being.
truth is, we may chose our spouses or friends, but we don't get to chose our parents.
this is a very good text!

[stars are far]

I love the way you wrote this .
very nice :)