Power Ballads, Shattered Glass Reality

“We are the champions my friends  
and we’ll keep on fighting till the end”  

I lip sync in this pub/church  
where the adults pray to fire-water  
 
pray for sentiment  
where men have the excuse they need  
to cry  
to throw up  
or for five seconds be something other than patriarch saints of the gutter  
 
leaning into the power ballad  
I eat my chicken chips with the gusto  
of a 6year old child thinking it’s Christmas.  
 
I crack open my 50cent bingo ticket and win $2  
lucky, lucky, lucky, I think  
go and order a coke from Marty the bar keep with my new found winnings  
the allure for more settles into  
young bones like cheap whiskey  
 
my Father stands amidst the chaos  
and hum-drum  
not the biggest man there by far  
but they pay him a deference reserved  
for those deemed too crazy to slight  
 
as the bottom of my coke drew near  
the heat in the room clicked two notches  
on the thermostat  
publicans gotta keep you drinking  
I think as sweat beads my brow  
 
a chill ripples  
atmosphere shifted  
two new men entered the room  
 
my father’s hackles raised  
as if a horn had blown and  
a dog of war with a Pavlovian response  
shifted in my fathers spine  
he seemed to swell  
emanating dark thoughts  
a will for violence leaking out  
the way sweat drips from an addict  
 
Later when the ambulance arrived  
I was the leaning post  
for my father to make it to the car  
a contusion swelling from his left  
eye  
puncture wounds as if from a dog  
dripping blood onto my hand  
 
the two men....  
 
they were inside  
fear frozen on the first one’s face  
as the weight of a slate pool table  
crushed the air from his lungs  
the other a mass of glass shards  
and slash wounds  
he lay eyes closed  
body convulsing in a fit  
a puddle of piss pooling in his pants  
he stank of regret and trauma  
 
while we were walking my father  
chuckled as if he’d just remembered  
some joke  
some flight of fancy that amused him  
how’d you like the show boy?  
 
No one gets the best of your dad