I wrote this for an open mic. I'll be cleaning it up and performing it for Dyke Descent
Do you think Uranus was proud of Cronos? The epic of Cronos is written from the perspective of a vengeful son.
Scorn for the father that plotted against him. If you dont know, Cronos was the son of Uranus, a prideful tyrant that inhabited the chaos before the earth became earth. Cronos brought an end to his tyranny when the that cut off his penis and usurped his father's throne. Then as he ushered in his own tyrranical rule He handed that legacy down to his son, Zeus, who Cronos tried to eat before he might well cut off his penis too. And so the son would resent the father and fear his own son. Cronos took the thing that made Uranus a "man". What is a man? Unchecked power? The freedom to abuse and fuck and consume as you see fit? Uranus faded from the story after his castration. Men are characters. Without their manhood they are nothing. What remains, of course, is the fruit of those loins [loyyyns]. Sweet Cronos. The embodiment of everything Uranus was, his genes made flesh again. Uranus wasn't humiliated by an outsider, in a way it was his own strength that damned him. And his legacy would live on and the world was no better off.
I buried my grandather recently. His manhood taken from him by an undignified death. Mind scoured by a stroke. He died delirious and shitting himself. He was buried by a scornful son who resented him. Most of what I knew about him comes second hand from that son. From Cronos.
My father had never quite liked me. My entire life he cast his gaze to the other boys on the playground. The tall, the strong, the ones who were good at sports and that weren't "little limp wristed faggots" as he so kindly put it to me. It was never fear that I would usurp him that filled my father's head. No he feared that I would be his burden. His failure. No game of catch went un-admonished, no teaching moment complete without a shouting match, no beating complete without the sappy apology about how he went too far but he was just so justified, It was for my own good. That maybe, just maybe if he hit me hard enough it would knock sense into me, some essence of manhood rub off his fists and onto me. It never has.
We hardly talk. He still treats me like an obligation and we have no real relationship. Occasionally he calls to show me something stupid he bought or to loudly pretend he doesn't know my pronouns. Like he's taunting me. Like he wants me to hit him back hard enough to make him scared. Like my father I am confrontational. I get in his face when he gets in mine, 150lbs and almost a foot on me I don't fear him. And when he yells at me and I yell back all I can hear is his voice, coming out of my mouth. And I hate it. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. My anger feels like his. My impatience, my instinct to be cruel, my deep yearning for something strong enough to put my world into perspective. To make it small enough to fear that I will be stripped of something important.
I don't want anything of his. They make me feel like a tyrant. I have lived every moment of my life in spite of the vision he has had for me, carved myself from crude stone to be the woman here and still he sees a flawed statue. Without dignity. Without the manhood that was my birthright. I have worked tirelessly to undo the lessons that instilled in me the hatred of my father's father and still I labour to prise it from my skull like a festering thorn.
And one day, friends, one day I will be free of it. Free of him. Buried by the daughter he never felt was worthy of his throne.
Do you think Uranus was proud of Cronos?
