Dead Beat Anthems

I feel like I had two dads growing up, the one I knew when we were a happy family and the one he became after he had an affair got divorced and moved in with my now "step mom" to the house I grew up in as a child.

Needless to say going there to visit harbors mixed emotions. I love my dad, truth be told, and we still have some kind of a relationship but a lot of times I have to make the effort in order to maintain any kind of connection.

Could be he grew up with a step dad that was a hard ass and he was never one to reach out consistently to his parents growing up.

At any rate if you in any way relate to my story or have your own on the subject, write a poem about it. I can go on and on about what it was like to basically feel like I was on the outside looking in of what it was like to watch him raise someone else's kids or the fact that not having him there growing up in my later years has found me missing out on that guidance that might've saved me a lot of trouble before we reconnected.

I honestly found my ability to write in the emotions expressed in many poems around this subject. This one was actually inspired by clashing with my father in law and stirred up my emotions about my dad when the impacts of father figures in many ways fail to live up to perhaps desired expectations.

It's weird how mother's day is kind of celebrated in a more positive light and father's day kind of gets overlooked or can find men are often scrutinized for ways they might have done better. While I kind of hate to perpetuate that stereo type truth is broken homes as a result of male unfaithfulness seems more prevalent a reality. Perhaps not always the case but of course my bias experience dictates this to seem more evidently so...

Square One

Reopening wounds in the gunfire of excusable provocation  
My words brim with venom when the heart is bleeding  
But hurt never got me off for murder at the mouth  
When notorious legends wear their filthy rags so boastfully  
Weighing hopes on the idea of all that you did right  
To sate the accusations of all the allegations that swell beneath the surface  

We are the redeemed until we need an excuse to justify bad behavior  
When there’s no such thing as heroes just lesser villains in need of an out of world Savior  

Blood shed is still the knife in the back even if the razor doesn’t cut quite so deep  
Just hit the snooze on being woken up to the reality of your demons when it’s easier just to go back to sleep  

Are there fathers or just pretenses doing just enough to get by  
When one man’s guilty bystander is another man with his own story for his alibi  

Thank you for your service when it weighs heavier then the compromise of a mutual sense of infidelity  
You’ve got a good enough story to be let off the hook because you shoulder more responsibility  

I am you but I strive to make a change while you remain the same  
You're set in your ways and you’ve earned the right to do so

I just get swift kicks because I’m too young to know any better  
And I can’t cry on your cold shoulder because you're a better father than I am a son  
I hope you're proud, you helped me write another sad Happy Father’s Day letter  
When progress is an illusion and these irritated scars bring us back to square one  

Helping me write poems that serenade heartache for assignments undone on this inverted throne  
When homework goes beyond grade school but I have to learn how to do these things on my own…

Rules:

- One Week
- One Entry Per Poet
- Don't write a book but say what you need to say'
- I'll choose the winner

fathers-memory