Father

I learned well from my father
the craft of the subtle whisper.
To use duct tape excessively
and to make tools that were once broken,
just sort of broken, endlessly.
His hands always cut corners and rough
around the edges, not worshipping
his body
but instead beating his flesh  
to a bloody mess
enslaving his skin to brutal labor daily.
Injury's always healing
but never having time to finish.
He taught me how to provide.
I followed in his hairy footsteps
blindly around short cuts seeking god.
His savior failed him when I was 13,
and in the crashing tumultuous
waves of that spring, he failed me.
His son, his believer, his lonely audience of one.
Standing in the doorway while  
he gripped his bottle laying naked on the floor  
in that empty house on Dupont Road.
Underneath the water tower he used to
take me past and get me happy meals
through drive through windows.
Not so happy anymore.
I now find myself caring for him like he once cared for me
as I once layed on the floor of our house back in San Diego
naked
all those years ago.
Piss staining my diaper and not knowing how
to stand up against the gravity
with a massive wobbling static head.
I think I will need more duct tape for this fix.

Once told me at a young age that
nothing is ever fair in this world,
and I hated him ever since.
To kill or be killed
and the brutality of nature pushing
forward progress on the decaying pieces
of the things that fall and rot before us.
Taught me to appreciate things  
like a fly on the wall,
the deer in the fields grazing
or the birds circling.
Parking automobiles in remote places,
looking for the best vantage points to sit
in stillness as the keen observer.
He asked me to sit silent,
to listen to the words.
I find it odd that he never taught me  
how to deal with difficult people  
and angry personas.
Showed me that the best kinds of light
are the aperture focused kinds
that come out of dark  
rooms behind doors.
The mysteries that lay on the forest floors
and the wonder of the universe ceiling
stirring the pot of our milky human ways.
Showed me a new way to think about grazing
so that I would not become a sheep in  
need of shepherding.
 
He is a part of me
speaks to me in riddles,
and loves the ways that I breath.
My father is a difficult man
and a true jokester.
Showing me ways to play
and how to conquer my regular night terrors
so I'll stop wetting the bed.
He has many tricks and methods for
dealing with every type of madness
but his own.
Passing down a love for nature and a
mischievous argumentative attitude that
never rests.
We have created flames together
that burned for weeks
and smelled like peat in the corner of the yard
smoldering monument to our friction.
He was once the brightest star in my sky
and also the light I was evading.
The most passionate person in my life
who cried while talking about music
before even pressing play.
We built things together only to watch them fall
and be torn apart by heavy winds.
He needed more tape then,
and still does to this day
as his hair turns grey  
and his angry persona fades away.
Never does he forget a story
or pass by on cracking the right joke
at exactly the wrong time.
No one is like him,
when he falls he bounces.
My own
clumsy mistake ridden soul.
I miss you pops
but at that time I knew I had to go away
and when I return to your grizzly bear arms
tight embrace
remembrance of nights when yelling my name
into the darkened woods while beating your chest.
I will now lay my head against you to count
your heart beat and cherish the rhythm
every second, as your own.
My own,  
my only one.
The psycho-analyzer of broken spirits
and fractured beginnings.
Chicken scratching the word scapegoat
into your desk
while telling me to never follow you
to where you are now, but never telling
me how you got there.
Evil is not out there somewhere far away
across this world,
but all too close inside our hearts.
I forgive you father,
I will keep you in my heart until it stops  
it's beating,
and long after you are gone.
My one and only
father.