When I was seven I asked my dad
at the dinner table, the only time
he was there to be asked anything,
a sensible adult 'real life' question.
His reply stunned me to an awkward silence.
I asked my dad about how to deal
with bullies [in primary school].
His reply to me was brief, simple,
and indegestible: 'Hit them first'.
I could not process what he said.
I'd seen him angrily throttle my mother
last Christmas, not that I was meant
to have seen that. It all happened
too fast to move me to where I
might not have watched it happen.
I was too young to know how Christmas
was oversold, or how the expectations it raised
created a discontent that could not be quenched,
once ingited, much less that dad was an alcoholic.
The argument between them blew up,
without warning, right in frront of me.
Following dad's logic I could not see
how he saw my mother as the bully
who he had to hit before she hit him.
She made his meals, washed his clothes,
looked after his money, and saved him
from a lot of the duties of being a parent.
How was I meant to process this violence
between adults, when reparations were so private?
How was I to follow his advice in school,
where the logic behind rules was so much
more complicated than I could explain to myself?
Fast forward over fifty years, and ordinary Americans
scratch their heads, much the way I once did,
to share their incomprehension at the new
'hit then first, partially explain later' foriegn policy,
where change is heaped on change, until there are
too many wars in the world to explain their origins.
And the former world policeman
has changed sides and quit his job,
signaling he wants to join in with the enmity.
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