Love Poem: Disordered Sons and Fathers
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Written by: Gerald Dillenbeck

Disordered Sons and Fathers

May all sacred,
but not quite omnipotent,
fathers learn this day
as we impatiently correct
our stress-disordered sons

That respect is earned,
so maybe disrespect is too
positive and negative layered
for and against authority
for and sometimes restlessly against
repeating Business As Usual 
white middle-class dadisms:

You snooze
you lose

May apply to your lethargic
chronically anxious 
thuggish 
couch-surfing
cannabis-fed son

And yet feels counter-intuitive
for babies
and us great grandads
who need our outside rest
away from commercial
too lit up
and loud
and relentlessly plastic
inhumane degradations

In such a rabidly anxious hurry
to wait for inevitable pandemics
and genocide,
floods
hurricanes
tsunamis
forest fires
drought
dry river beds
famine
insomnia
rabidity
insurance company bankruptcy
government balkanization
supremacist tribalism

Silent self-medicating snoozes
feels like a healthy alternative to:

capitalist narcissism
anthro-supreme monotheism
monoculturing nationalism
painful survivalist isolation 
demented diseases
species extinctions
self v other criminalizations
weaponizations

May feel like hoarding safety 
for defense-oriented males
on a bad day
in a depressing moment

Become
yackity yack disrespectful
feeling entitled to rightwing exclusively define
"real [unwoke narcissistic] men."

Yet quietly hiding
under these sacredly respected 
and secular unrespected unsuspecting layers
of diverse manhood hues and warring cues
lie traumatizing patriarchal cultures.

Capital co-invested resilient climates
prefer cooperatively active integrity
over passive faith-based respect
and dramatically traumatic disrespect
and unenlightened
stress-triggered verbal unrespect
accelerating competitions,
dis-integrity
unhealthy desecrating excommunications.

Consecrating sacred solidarity feelings
learned today
converge synergetic need/want supportive
resonant polyvagal
resilient communication systems
searching for win/win reconnections

Even when sometimes disrespectfully correcting
my pre- and post-traumatic
stress disordered father
son.