dad

 Eyes plastered shut:
He beats his wife-
Film shoots faster as he sees his life-

Born in bumfuck-Chester,
in class always a jester,
cause he never learned
how to be truthful,
connect and be with other people.

And on Sundays, he saw no steeple
just his dad and mom-
normal people.
But they weren’t normal.

Now it’s real apparent,
he had two crazy fucks
for real parents.

Too much love- blow by blow.
Too much hate- blow by blow.
Sexual and physical, his pain
was his brothers’, his sister’s
and his alone.

Cause looking back his parents
were fucking wack,
but how was he to know-
how was he to grow-
into a man if all he knew
of his dad
was his hand?

So he left
leaving three kids and back rent,
he signed on the dotted line-
to serve on our front line-
to make up for time
spent smoking

to forget, selling to pay rent.

The Hell he saw, the pain of it all
drove him away,
broken, misaligned and with bills to pay.
Betrayed by his people, his parent, his steeple-
Cause no god could do this to His people.

That brings us to a cool night in May-
a ring on her finger, a baby on the way-
the third wife and the fourth kid.

Never far from the tree- he didn’t stray
But he held his pain in his head, heart and
In between.

Thoughts of him hanging on a cliff
with his dad prying his fingers
pain in his eyes, mouth full of lies,
his last hold slipped and he fell-
well, he tried.
     

And that brings us to today,
Bottle in his hands,
family away.

She had finally had enough
and he couldn’t hold on.
Too many nights distant,
No hands held, only hands wristed.

A bottle only holds so much pressure,
cracks form,
and I just want you to hold it together.

There’s reasons to his actions-
for the weed and the acid-
for my need to hash this
out.
Why my childhood’s blacked out.

Gotta say, he never backed out-
but maybe he had nowhere to go,
or maybe he had no money to blow

cause for each rhyme there’s a reason
and for each crime a little paint’s peelin’
in the house he was born in:
in the house he was scorned in.

And I guess after all this time,
I can start to understand him, me and mine.