a bloody stupid way to die

it would have been so easy for you,
I realise now,
to file me away
as having done what I did
because I just wasn’t meant for this world,
because I was a mother’s boy,
and not my father’s son.

and so it is that proving you wrong -
by which I mean your animal brain,
your dunderheaded animus,
uncultivated by
a single spark of men’s intelligence -
has kept me going, all this time.

even though I cut my face
because I was so scared of you
that putting myself in hospital
was better than being honest,
I see now what I knew back then:
that dying would have been stupid,
as utterly stupid as you,
as utterly dead in the higher thinking
as you chose to be a long time ago, dad.