pop (redemption comp)

my father married my mother
when I was five years old

the dude that knocked her up
was long gone, my only memory
him drinking quarts of beer
out of brown bags
and puking up blood

earliest memories of pop
the man who raised me
was visiting him upstate
in prison

he was thirty three when he got out
married my mom
and flew as straight
as a man
drunk on family
and freedom
is willing to

worked throughout my childhood
to get out us out of the areas
where white trash burdens black neighbors
and put us in a school
where the kids get cars
for birthdays

I was the first of the kids
to go to college, went to Art School
grew dreadlocks, wrapped crystals in them
traveled my country in a psychedelic circus
went far enough along the road of wing nut
to offer pop a lifetime of catching shit on jobsites
if pop was the taking shit type
which he wasn't

I could help him
bleed the brakes on the Chevy
love a woman with solid steel grace
and respect like he did my mother
keep quiet when the fishing line
hits water

could keep quiet

lost pop when I was twenty
and went the way of weak
where the darks
stitch mud into lavender

pop would have backhanded
the moments before
any of that selfish bullshit started
into last week
but it took me ten years
to feel the sandpaper
caring callouses
of the mans hands

got myself hemmed up
my time a lot less hard
than his

I was thirty
when I resembled
a sort of man
that my pop
would shake hands with

thirty three now
and softer from smart
than the man who raised me
but if there is a bar
where the men like him and I go
when we pass, which there must be
I will toast to the tales
that take decades to tell

and

I will tell him all about
my ol' lady
and her two boys