Just Like Him

When I was a kid my brother used to sit on my chest and ask the question: Why ya hitting yourself?
When I was a kid my brother had my back, and my front to overcome to beat upon till day was done, that was my brother and that's how he won.

My brother, the wrestler, the WWF, but rather than a golden a belt to idolize my brother claimed as his only prize the tears in my eyes as I realized what brotherly love must be-- it's a beaten body.
He held my face to the stove as he turned on the heat, after hours alone his power mistreated my parents returned and dripped with conceit, you're just too defensive, they often repeated.

He's not out to get you, he's not trying to be mean, my brother would smile his conscience so clean

Well, I'm sorry I think that I misunderstood you, I thought you knew how it felt love came and hit you but you didn't see cause scars deeper than tissues, the bruises have faded but now I have issues...

I remember the sounds as his friends would laugh as he showed off his strength as he was kickn' my ass and I never could muster the strength to fight back cause, I never wanted him to feel as bad as i did.

For this tyrant king I was only a jester, and now that we're grown I see he's protector of a wife and a child I watch and I wonder, how he loves so damn deep with nary a spectre of the one I once knew, the one who would hit me and laugh as I cried and who saw nothing in me. I find myself wishing that things could be different, that we could talk and be friends and I don't know be repentent of the time that we lost, and years that were wasted, for all of the pain and the blood that we tasted.

I come now my friends to reveal the worst of it all, to tell you the secret thats haunted my soul, my greatest wish and my fondest whim, you see what I want most, is to be just, like, him.

Comments

[Dan Lowe]

Wow. Michel, I love the hip hop freedom of this verse. I don't know if you intended it to be a poem, but man, thank you so much for being so real, so authentic. This is DAMN good. It evokes so much. There is a real sense of your pain, as though the pen you were holding were bleeding out years of emotions stuffed by the blows of both your brother and your folks' refusal to acknowledge what was going on. The verse is very violent...such a wonderful, often neglected, side of vulnerability. Thank you.