Damn, my
son is a poet
I suppose
I may be to blame
When he
was still making deposits
In a
diaper that no one wanted to withdrawal
I would
lay down some sweet
Rhymes
from Mother Goose
Letting
loose some Little Boy Blues
And Three
Blind Mice
But it was
me who was blind
Blind to
the fact that I…
I was
creating a poet
Who would
have thought that
When I was
spittin’ some Ittsy Bittsy Spider
He would
be forever changed
It was
beautiful how a rub a dub dub
With the
men in the tub
Taught him
to share
and from
the whole Miss Muffet fiasco
he learned
he needed to grow a pair
Jack Sprat
gave him a dietary direction
And Little
Bo’ Peep well, she gave him a tiny-erection
Now I knew
he was a bit of a stinker
A Georgy
Porgy free-thinker
A rebel
ready to challenge the man
………….and
When he
was 8…9…10
He was
cool…
And I
didn’t care
But when
his younger brother
Post bathroom episode
whispered
secretly to his mother
“I think
he has hair…down there”
I was
like, “Whoa!” my boy has become a man
And I
turned into my dad preaching the
cookie cut, carbon copy, college, cubicle,
respectable,
tax paying, not 27 on my couch laying, PLAN
Fear I
suppose
Fear of
having a kid lost in a world ready to eat you
And not in a
good way
Fear of
being a failure when asked at my class reunion
“What does
your son do?...Mine is in college…Harvard…curing cancer…
with
plasma lasers…shot from nano-bots…that he designed…”
“Yeah…well…
my son’s a….my son’s a….a…”
Damn….my
son’s a poet
So, I
shifted into action
trying to
topple the teen
I had set
upright
Shoving
this misshapen ameba into a mold
Trying to
weave straw into gold
But he
wasn’t buying the magic beans I sold
Just
trying to get my son up the hill
To fetch a
pale of success
Knowing
that poetry would
Cause him
to tumble down
Regardless
of any metaphorical Jill
I too was
a rebel
And the
acorn didn’t fall far from the tree
I just
didn’t realize the man he would
challenge, was me
“Remember,
I’m the Baa Baa Blacksheep
Yes sir,
Yes sir three bags…..FOOL!”
“How dare
you say you’re my dad.
You don’t
deserve that title…don’t use it!”
Stick and stones do break bones
Words
pound steel into tin
And All
the Kings Horses and All the King’s Men couldn’t put
This
Humpty Dumpty back together again.
So I did
what any good father would do...
I pushed!
“Hey, you
can Hey Diddle, Diddle your butt right out the door!”
Which
he did
“and go
live in a tent!”
Which
he did
“In one of
your friend’s parent’s yard!”
Which
he did
Years
passed
Runnin’
rings around the rosy
“You have
to get a job and go to school son”
Yeah, well, you’re a jerk
And around
“You are
never going to amount to anything son”
Yeah, well, you’re a jerk
And around
“I can’t
keep bailing you out of everything son”
Yeah, well, you’re a jerk
And around, the not-so-rosy
future
College
failed, Work fired, work fired, work quit, college failed,
Hospital,
Long unemployment, jail, hospital, work quit…quit…quit
He was
killing me bit by bit…Contrary to Mary
It was me
that was about to be planted in her garden
But all
this time he was writing…
