DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE Poem: Thief in the Morning, by Connor Ballard

Last night I had a dream of my younger self, greased black under the eyes and used and oily after an American football game I remember playing in high school. It was the last game of the season, and in the last quarter I ran back a kickoff for something of about 80 yards in a straight and unyielding sprint through midfield frenzies tugging at the jersey. My dad is a proud father in this moment and I see the prophecy of this American football prodigy. He has done what has been the incipience of greatness for many in this sport. Further than that he has performed a desirable trope of the ideal young American man and son of the blue collar father that has been in all the movies and magazines and books and platitudes of early or soon to be father gatherings. It is a beautiful fulfillment, direct and congruent. The echoing of this congruency meets its disembodiment in a phone call back to the father years later. The son has told the father that he is dropping out of a prestigious film school and he is met with the low bitrate, gurgling sobs of his old man explaining his own visions of his son’s success and godly figure shining down on them.

Here is the moment I destroy the sureness not only of my old man’s pride but my own. I
no longer know what I am doing.

I wake up a thief.

Author: poetryfest

Submit your Poetry to the Festival. Three Options: 1) To post. 2) To have performed by an actor 3) To be made into a film. View all posts by poetryfest