Psychologically wound tight as a winch

Hester Prynne silently bore punishment

decreed courtesy strict
Puritan magistrates
and town fathers of Boston
that Hester Prynne
must wear the scarlet letter "A"
(a book with the same title
courtesy Nathaniel Hawthorne)

prominently displayed
on the breast of her gown,

specifically over her heart

for adultery and begetting

a child out of wedlock

in 17th-century
Puritan Massachusetts setting,
decreed she must be required
to wear symbol of shame
on her clothing,
upon her bosom and psyche,
did said capital offense pinch,
which she herself famously
embroidered with gold thread,
yet methinks the father
(of the "Kitchy coo" -
often spelled kootchy-koo
or gitchy-goo coo -
an affectionate, nonsensical phrase
used as "baby talk" or "motherese"
to amuse, soothe,
or tickle babies
and young) innocent child
got off scott free,

and maybe twas perhaps
upon his domination,
and aggressive insistence
similar to the coerced,
forced, and inforced
non consensual intercourse
that begat nine months later,
our second of two daughters,

cuz yours truly started
to pout like the grinch
if sexual overtures
gently snubbed by spouse

and doth automatically flinch,

not only aversion,
and animus toward self now,
(twenty seven plus years later)
for being so pushy
and squishy with willy,

nevertheless when the wife musses

with my longish and wavy hair,
when she playfully doth cinch
into a ponytail these
silvered brown shy locks
(streaked with gray),
which habitual retraction away
from hand(s) of spouse,
when she doth fiddle
and jig with me hair,
(finding me fretfully bowed over),
or if spouse lightly
drums atop me noggin
(giving me a knick knack paddywhack..)
which harmless antics
analogous to a hair trigger
harkens back to mine earlier days of yore
rather foremost behavioral trait
throughout mein kampf
when I vividly remember,
father of mine ofttimes
made spontaneous but futile attempts
to reach out and touch yours truly,
not in any threatening manner,
but merely to express
non verbal affection
for his singular son,
who lapsed into boyhood interrupted
on the cusp of adolescence,
and in fact off told
and recounted by either parent,
clear as that Tuesday January thirteenth
nineteen hundred and fifty nine
characterized by drizzle and fog,
the day he (the writer of these words)
got born free and clear
when their second of three progeny
and only male offspring
(scores of decades ago)
that nobody but mommy
could pamper, coddle, cosset,
spoil, indulge, baby and mollycoddle me

whereat yours truly suckled at the breast

particularly during my infancy
and in later years
estranged himself from
those two adults who contributed

to his existence.

Somehow at a tender age
being heavily endowed
with being gifted
with hirsute characteristic
sprouting from mine numb skull

at least during the winter months
living as a wild, where survival

linkedin to ability to forage
for lichen to non poisonous plants,
small game, berries
and hence must possess
broad botanical knowledge
and often resort to a page
from a playbooks about edible herbs –
that witnessed considerable usage
and adopt the appellation zage
not a standard English word,
but appears as a name
(Slavic/Hebrew for strength),
a surname (German/Slovenian origin),
or a typo for "zag" (a sharp turn)
or German "zagen" (to hesitate/fear),
and can also relate
to Amharic (corrode)
or Hausa (abuse) in specific contexts,
but most often points to names
or related words like zagging
(moving in zigzags), zagen
(hesitate), or the footballer Zague,
often spotted as the wild man of Borneo

my completing a trio
where a long deceased forebear
though a man of ordinary height
and often referred primarily to themselves
as a famous 19th-century sideshow act
featuring two strong,
short-statured dwarf brothers,
Waino (Hiram) and Plutanor (Barney),
promoted as exotic jungle natives,
and secondarily to orangutans,
whose Malay name means

“person of the forest,”
with thick matted hair
covering the majority
of my scrawny body
when born, and not surprisingly

called little monkey

courtesy my mother.