Ex Cathedra

The old man says something
even in his sleep
and I still listen,
but only in my sleep.
Our sleeps are troubled and incomplete.
It’s been a long, long time.
He might be dead and gone, but on he speaks . . .
still teaching what he never knew . . .
insisting,
always arguing.
I am not disturbed by questions.
(He never asks any.)
I have plenty of my own.
He speaks in answers
to questions never asked.
He speaks from revelations
that weren’t addressed to him
or witnessed in the flesh.
He read all the wrong answers
in an editorial once
in a small town newspaper
somewhere long ago
and he rebuts them, condemning
in castrated Taurus passion
all day and all night.
I am Taurus,
not he.
Taurus day and night,
but I listen still,
am stubbornly impotent,
because he lost his balls
slamming the paper shut.