This is a poem also about my father now.
He was a-- he was a fine father.
The only thing he wasn't good at was husbanding.
Do you know people like that?
And I imagine that he gave it all he had,
but he just wasn't good at it.
And I recently read some things that he
had written to someone else and I discovered
that he was worse than I thought he was, which really got to me
and so I had to get over that trauma.
And I wrote a poem, this is called "Forgiving My Father."
My husband read this and said, you
have not forgiven your father.
And I did say, well I have tried.
[LAUGHTER]
Forgiving my father.
It is Friday, we have come to the paying of the bills.
All week you have stood in my dreams
like a ghost asking for more time,
but today is payday, payday old man.
My mother's hand opens in her early grave
and I hold it out, like a good daughter.
There is no more time for you, there
will never be time enough daddy, daddy old lecher old liar.
I wish you were rich, so I could take it all
and give the lady what she was due.
But you were the son of a needy father,
the father of a needy son.
You gave her all that you had, which was nothing.
You have already given her all you had.
You are the pocket that was going to open and come up empty
any Friday.
You were each other's bad bargain not mine.
Daddy, old pauper, old prisoner, old dead man,
what am I doing here?
Collecting.
You lie, side by side in debtor's boxes
and no accounting will open them up.
[APPLAUSE]