father fury

my son, with his drooly
speech, and his
excitable howling
and his fumbling dexterity
and his shoes on the
wrong feet and his open
fly and his picked-over
sores and his near-egregious,
gargantuan, gaping smile
and his stewing adolescence
and his incapacity for
meaningful discourse

was not dislodged by the snickers
of the boys this morning when
he'd launched his boisterous hello
at them and waved his fearless wave
toward them and dribbled his subterranean
basketball dribbling in their presence

as much as i was

i seethed
beneath the skin of my bones
at them as they pointed and
laughed; i wanted to pull
their souls through their
fingernails and strip them
naked before their petty
peers who preened in the
hallways of their school
and erected statues to these
new gods by their silences

i have gotten angry with
him many times; i have yelled
at my son, and i carry that
guilt one mile for every word
spilled from my guts and onto
his plate; i am sorry, and i have
no grave for my sins beyond
what my own arms will drag me
into, so i pray alone with dirt
in my mouth

in truth, i balance upon a wing
of smoke with my heels bleeding
and my eyes sewn shut, if
only to make do with these
tools i've been given

i was once a boy who
wept in the darkness
of my bedroom after
school so that my mother
knew nothing of the
trolls who haunted the
shadows of my days

i believed then that i
called down upon my
own head the lightning
bolts of those who held
dominion over me and
those like me, who
were voiceless

but today

i abide no fool who
scoffs at a soul that shades
to one side or the other
of a movable line: differences
are ghosts drawn in the salt of
the air and melt with the
tears of the mothers

so what have you that i have not,
and what have you not that
i have dreamt for my sons?

a firmer soil on which to stand?

please.

you have nothing but
your grandfathers' impotence
and coiling hell to look
forward to

so i sat beside these boys
and i whispered into the
pores of their waxed eyes:

i will make you piss
yourselves and drain
you of your fathers' wills
if you
point your finger

one

more

time