SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR SELF-GRATIFICATION
It's not often that I think of my parents
while masturbating. I hope that doesn't surprise you.
But lately my father has been slipping into my
fantasies, it's truly bizarre. There I'll be, happily
inside that made prism, a faceless body of lust before me
at, say, a hotel room; Chevy back seat cool, silk sheets, whatever
when from that motel room's pleather chair
or turned around, arm over the headrest, my dad will say
"How's it going back there?" or "I'll be in the head
if you need me." With fierce passion and desperate
impatience I push him away, in my mind I tell him
to fuck off, like I did April of '79 on Lime Street
where he'd been teaching me to drive a standard shift.
My hand jerking the stick to all points of the compass,
clutch burning sickly sweet, I remember the spot of sweat
on the back of his neck as he popped the hood to check
a gasket, or plug and I knew then it would take everything
I would ever have to match memory's vast passion
for the random gracelessness of my silly little life.
We've all been caught with our hands down our pants
by figures who created us with that same, clean lust.
If my brain screws up once in a while and mistakes
love for love, that's fine I won't let it bring me down.
Jesse Waters
