Patricide

   "-Nadja. This was the name she had chosen for herself. She liked it because 'it is the beginning of the Russian word for hope--and it is only the beginning.'"
 
-Andre Breton: Nadja

 Four years now, and still I haven't responded.  
I don't know what I'd do
if I saw him today.   
  
What is disgrace? It's wishing 
your name was a maiden.  
Wishing you'd never seen that hole  
in the shit part of town,  
Wishing that the smell of the previous occupant's  
cigarette fetish would leave  
your nostrils.  
  
It's regret, the memory 
of the black cat in the open window behind  
the stereo.  But the only pang of guilt is a lack of remorse 
entirely.  The capacity to write people out   
of your poems without a forensic trace.   
Sometimes murder can be committed in silence,  
wishing for silence to wash your face  
and fingers.  Wishing at a lock never changed  
the combination.  

Perhaps Freud was somewhat right 
on one and a half points:  and a cigar  
is usually just that.  
The damn cat didn't run  
away that night, either,  
at least it learned to be less inquisitive,  
but that's another story.      

If I had the chance to rip him open and  
dump in the garbage I'd packed away  
after four years of collecting it,
I'd ignite it first and watch the whole mess burn.  
  
It would only take a letter or a ride, 
but I won't make them.   
Guilt of apathy is a nagging leech,  
begging to be  plucked and forgotten,  
but ultimately the wound goes on bleeding  
til forgotten, but the problem with leeches 
is there are always more.