i would say my father is a war

_{war horse: one who has been through many battles, struggles, or difficult experiences.
one who has presumably triumphed and persevered through hardships.}

i would say my father is a war horse but that is a failed symbol
because he has been dragged through the dirt as many times as this metaphor

i want to write in abstract like in a book of
contemporary poetry i bought over the summer;
it was all syllables and lines of punctuation repeated over and over
i want to write something that describes how i feel without saying a word that describes it -
like:
dust and ache and tired and bone and overflowing and lonely and fuck and    .

i want to write poems that have meaning without being cliche i want poems
that defy grammar and space and time because when someone reads them, they become me
i want someone to read this and know that right now

it is approximately 12:04am
and my ears are itchy and my eyes -
my eyes -
i feel a deer prancing behind my eyes, his heavy antlers pushing
against my forehead and i should name him ares because i've got an olympic-sized headache
threatening to burn down the villages of my mind
but instead the deer yells WANNA GO?
and he says it like an angry, underfed, pubescent boy with too many dreams
and not enough secrets to make him special

and that's how much my head is throbbing -
there's a deer and a war god and a scared teenager in there
and an unfinished lab report in front of me

and all i can think of in the world is how i can never finish a poem without at least once
mentioning you, because
fuck the war horse symbol and fuck my failed abstract poetry
all i want to know is that you love me
and that if anyone reads this,
i hope they know it sounds best when you read it out loud.