Ted
by Lorcan Ryan-Black
Here is the heart that beat, that beat
With yours - does it bleed? Are we the same?
I used to dream you abducted on a boat on the Seine,
To separate us,
To spite me.
But I dreamt you had ordered it, and I,
I the jewel of your eye, the one
Great fool you left when you exited that room.
How you remembered my name, when the wind
Changed and you came, you Ted, you.
Black boots, black belt and a sadist's eye,
Only missing a crooked, hooked black-on-red cross
Adorning your shoulder and thigh.
Your dark red runs through my veins Ted,
Since then, Ted, since then.
What is there,
In a name?
Pack me off on the train to Belsen then,
A lame sheep to your slaughter-heart house.
I'm not suited to your black-booted-brute regime.
Or perhaps you could ignore, you who've out-grown me,
And I could rise in the morning and metamorphose.
I could discard my wan, yellowing star, and it's flame, for it ails you.
And don a black shirt and cap.
I could be more like you, with your mediocrity,
Your shame. I could be more like you,
With your goosestep, your hasty judgement
And your whip-crack
Verbal-attack.
This light, it is borrowed. Blackness is separated
From the candle flame by mere inches, and finds the truth,
Finds this crippled carcass half crouched in
Tacit darkness, dragging itself through the dust
To you, Ted, you, on its bleeding fingers, legless-
A bright, white peace flag over its blistering back.
It is our final trial Ted.
You stand authoritatively at its end, and I its
Head, looking it over with gleaming pride,
It's your latest victim, you said.
I wonder if it's symbolic, mine master and disaster, mine Herr Ted.
But what of it then? My so-called trusted? My friend?
Your lie, a rigid red swastika, stings and appals!
My flickering star makes you sick.
Bludgeon it then! With your brute butcher's cleaver!
Hear it holler and yell. Your repression reduced me, you user,
You user, you.
But in truth, I am better,
Being revolver-shot of a backhanded
Bastard like you.
***
Lorcan Ryan-Black lives in Kildare Ireland. You can contact him by email. This poem was published by Areiga in an earlier version, here.
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