Poetry: Requiem for the Duke of Paducah by Mark Parsons

Requiem for the Duke of Paducah

My parents were millionaires

When having a million dollars meant something

My parents were penniless, beaten and broken under crushing debt

My parents were entrepreneurs

When being an entrepreneur didn’t mean being a capitalist

Because everybody was a capitalist

My parents were white trash, cracker tornado bait

My parents were iconoclasts

Who taught their children to kneel down before no man

My parents were social climbers, terrified of giving themselves away

Being found out as rustic simpletons

My parents were green berets raising an army of flinty-eyed survivors

My parents were tastemakers in God’s country

If God hates refinement and taste

My parents were mad scientists

Who bred their children in test tubes

Assembled their spawn from the refuse of charnel houses

My parents couldn’t see the forest of their monstrous offspring

For the trees of each child’s multitude of shortcomings

Every one of which defects needed prompt corrective attention all the time

My parents lived in fear of social embarrassment, were slaves to the opinions of their peers

Who were all millionaire anarchists

My father dressed my mother in furs

After 20 years of working her to the bone

He browbeat her in front of the children, he put her on a pedestal

He used a belt on us if we disrespected her

My father just wanted a little love from his wife

Who was frigid and wouldn’t let him touch her

My mother henpecked my father, kicked him out of their marital bed

Because she couldn’t stand his curling yellow toenails

Overgrown like vulture talons

My parents lived in separate parts of the house

My parents still loved each other after 30 years but divorced

Because their monstrous offspring reminded them too much of their youthful hubris

Their mistaken belief that they could do it all alone

Knew better than the so-called experts

In the fields of child-rearing and education

Especially education public schools by that point

Well down the path of social engineering

Elements of political correctness, multiculturalism

Having irrevocably crept in

According to my parents

Not to mention bussing

What a nightmare my parents and their well-heeled friends lamented

My parents were primitives, wore homunculi around their necks in glass reliquaries

My parents cut the ears off their enemies, who were legion

In the small town where we lived

My parents gambled on riverboats

My father carried a derringer and wore a pocketwatch

My mother spoke the Queen’s English and wondered why

Her children couldn’t be more like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

Lamented the fact that her husband was a brute, a primitive

My parents survived being struck by the same lightning

They used to bring cadavers to life in the attic

Before naming them

My parents buried bodies around their swimming pool

My parents voted for Reagan

My mother lied to her children about how she voted in 84

My mother lied to her children about everything

My mother had a healthy relationship with her children

My parents didn’t trust the government

My parents worked for the CIA

But didn’t lie to their children about this

My parents believed knowing was fun

My parents bred high-maintenance pedigreed show dogs

That had breathing problems

And were incontinent

Everywhere in the tastefully appointed upper middle class west end house

My father bought my mother

2 miles from the flood wall along the river

And which my mother devoted herself to decorating in an ivory and gold color scheme

With Far East accents provided by Chinese trunks, silk screens

Pottery and jade from pre-revolutionary China

Sent to her by her aunt

A Grande Dame

When the phrase still meant something

Who married a man there before the war

And then escaped with him to the Philippines where they became hoteliers

The Philippines also ending up occupied

The aunt and her husband interred

But it doesn’t matter

My mother’s certain her son will get around to liberating the islands

Sooner or later

And singlehandedly revive a once-vital trade relationship for the importing of coconut oil

A victim of the trade embargo and the post-World War II propaganda

About “bad” saturated fat and “good” unsaturated fat

My mother was a bitch

Chow and Boxer mix that attacked anyone who got too close to me

Including my mother and father

My mother never cheated on my father

Thus had no sympathy for him

Was never satisfied

No matter how successful in business he was

Complained because her Buick wasn’t a Mercedes

Not even after my father worked his cock off

Literally did she stop complaining

Complained because of what he had sacrificed for his job

Which of course wasn’t a job, was a small business

Which of course demanded sacrifice from everyone

Just like the Vietnamese family that owned the only Chinese restaurant in town

And just like the Vietnamese family my parents were refugees

From the war-torn country of West Virginia

Who re-invented themselves as moneyed sophisticates in a bargetown

My parents crossed the Ohio River at night in rafts

To sneak into Illinois and smuggle cigarettes back across the border

My parents were militaristic

My parents were anarchists

My parents were militant in their hatred of following orders

And in their contempt and disdain for those who did

Follow orders, obeyed without question

Except for their children

Who were expected to obey and revere their parents with fervent unquestioning obedience

Except for the times when my parents wanted to see

A little grit, a little sand in their children’s character, a little character

In their character

Even if it was bad character

My father liked McEnroe and Connors

My mother like Borg

But for the times when he didn’t travel with his parents so they could watch him play

Like Connors did

Which was every time Borg played

Until the last 2 tournaments before he retired

Which he lost

Finally coming back down to Earth

My mother pretended like she didn’t see Connors’ dominating mother

Who raised her son for one thing only

And that was for her to live through, like my mother

Who was like every mother with her son

Living vicariously through him

To the endless private mirth and amusement of my father

Who liked watching Connors play on Sunday morning on TV in the living room

If only to rub my mother’s nose in it, in his understanding of her

Warped and unhealthy relationship with her son

The two of whom he suspected had more than just an emotionally incestuous bond

But physically as well

Bud Collins cheerfully oblivious and

Chirping about what was then

In those pre-Oprah days not looked upon with the same emotionally evolved disgust

Such a domineering mother and son relationship would now engender

My parents taught their children to respect the God in every man

My parents taught their children to look down on no man

No matter how humble

And if there were no God in man

Then so much the worse for him

Hopefully he had a nice suit

My parents wanted to see fervent histrionics from their children

The better to intimidate their enemies

Who would be legion my parents were sure

My parents criticized their children for having no demonstrable emotions

My parents taught their children to care about someone or something

Is to be vulnerable to its destruction

And thus to care about no one and nothing

Save winning in a world where only the weak and ill-formed, plaintive and sniveling survive

If not thrive, if not prosper

My parents lived in caves, under stairs, always in the closet

At the end of a dark hall

My parents were nomads, lion tamers, dueled at 20 paces with flintlock pistols

My parents taught their children family is inviolate

Family secrets stayed family secrets

Skeletons in closets stayed in the closets

My parents went to church

My parents laughed at God and Man

My parents knew which way the wind blew

Even when they knew better

My parents knew better

There was only one rule in my family

My parents were right

And if they were wrong

See rule number one

Mark Parsons' poems have been recently published or are forthcoming in ExPat Press, Dreich, Cape Rock, and I-70 Review.