Be A Man | A Poem

“Rise up oh men of courage,

Rise up oh men of God.”

My father read these words with a quiet intensity.

Offering them up as though it were some sort of legacy for my brothers and I to uphold.

I was treated like nothing more than an ant parading about a grand monument to his manhood.

Awestruck by his masculine splendor as I danced upon my future grave trapped within a nation derivative of my own innate idiocracy.

This exhausted narrative had been force fed to me ever since I waa a child.

It had been shoved in my face from silver platters held by uncalloused hands.

Spoon fed to me before I could even speak my demands of what I believed I as a man was entitled to.

Those silver platters were adorned by the fecal matter of my father.

And the seething maggots were the crumbs falling to his perfect housewife.

Let me take you on a walk back in time with me

Sitting in the library room of my childhood home

The aroma of leather bound Louis L'amour novels float about the space.

Homeschool academia adorn the shelves to my left

And my father sits on a wooden bench across from me.

In his hands he holds a book of what it means to be a man.

Finally I am of age to have the talk.

Wait, you think I meant the sex talk?

No.

See, the talk from my father growing up had nothing to do with the biblically proclaimed sinful desires of the flesh.

But had everything to do with the responsibility of becoming a man.

Being a man of the house at thirteen was my destiny

That is, according to my father.

His blessing to me:

Upholding his patriarchy.

I wasn’t raised to be a man.

I was raised 

No, I was groomed so that when I became of age

My father, and men of his ideals could use me,

My brothers, and any other young men of my generation

Who they knew were nothing more than naive boys wanting to feel like they were being chosen for something special.

When in reality we were being trained like good dogs to uphold a system of domineering belittlement and cruelty.

See boys will be boys

Is just the owner saying to their trained dog

“Good boy” after they've beaten them.

And if I dared stray too far from my father's side

I would choke upon my own aspirations birthed of ignorance.

So when I hear some dense pig-ignorant statement from someone years my senior

Speak of us being less men than they,

I want to say:

We are the generation who wet our appetites from baskets of shattered hopes

And devour entrees of broken dreams

Your gift to us:

A destruction of freedoms.

A desecration of liberties.

A lie of false acceptance.

You say we men have grown apathetic.

And I must agree.

We have grown apathetic towards you.

We actively deny your oppressive claims,

We attempt to challenge the established and dominant definition of MAN which you offer 

“What has happened to real masculinity?”

You cry from your television thrones

Your cushioned recliner seats,

Attention rapt, like hollow drones.

You make known your immense disappointment in us all.

You cry for better days of war and violence.

You pretend to celebrate life while fighting to remove it.

You prioritize selfish profit off the weak

And worship gods crafted from your own reflections.

You scream freedom

Dancing beneath a peacock feathered array of patriotism

As you actively strip women of their most basic rights.

You cannot see that it's you,

Yourselves are the wolves in sheep's clothing

Pointing fingers at the generation beneath you

Attempting to maintain the cycle of starved introspection.

Men like my father are scared,

Scared because they see their hold on the generations after them slipping away.

They never wanted to raise their children to be better

Or to do better.

They wished for a generation of yes men to abide by their established order.

Men who couldn’t stand without a foundation of trampled bodies.

What my father failed to understand was that being a man had nothing to do with what's between one's legs, or someones inherent masculinity,

But rather had everything to do with maturity, morality and honesty.

Or just simply choosing to man up and be a good and decent person.

Hate was my fathers projection

And his legacy of manliness is now abandoned by unbridled sons.