Why I Hate My Parents

Why I Hate My Parents
by Igor Frankenstein, Aged 12 3/4

Mornings were mother scolding:
"Igor! Stop slouching! Sit up properly!
You're back will end up that way if you don't!"
Me, trying to say I couldn't sit up,
Her ignoring me, wishing I'd never been.
Mornings were Dad, reading the paper,
Wondering if they'd published his letters.
Me, hoping they hadn't, not ready for
Teasing at school about his ideas of storms
And science centuries out of date.
"Give me lightning, fresh corpses stitched together from
Dead bodies and a brain or give me death!" He'd cry.
And mom would tell him to sit down and eat his toast.
After, he'd ask me how track was going, if I was
Working out, when I'd be strong enough to
Dig up bodies for him; I haven't been able to say
I already have, but they were so still and kind, that I
Stay out with them all night, alone in the graveyard, just
A lonely hunchbacked boy knowing, to the taste
Of earth and musty pine, that I will never get a date
And the closest I will come to love is touching them
And hugging them, dead, drawn up from the underworld,
The only people who listen to me and don't make jokes,
The only ones who don't laugh at me because my parents
Are weird and I think I am becoming just as weird too,
But the dead never answer when I ask, and maybe this
Is normal, to seek solace with the dead that the living deny:
There is no one I can ask, no one I can talk to, only this: --
A Shovel, moonlight, and a sad song lodged in my heart.