The Stain on the Livingroom Lamp

when I was a kid
there was always Indian blood
on the shade of our lamp
something about a nail and a board
and the redneck neighbours
from the apartment below
who let me watch soaps
when I was sick

I never forgave my mother
for trading my dreams
of an elegant foreign father
for friends who never were
but I made my own intimacy
with the stain
of the Punjabi man
I would never meet
but knew like a Rorschach
for seven years

because the Indian father I never had
left me a message
in the code of his blood
and so I always knew
I'd rather be the evidence
of a beating for the difference
of who I was
than the lost chance of love
for acceptance that never comes