Father's Day Failures

Father’s Day Failures

The dead-end kids of fallen cops
with ancient butterscotch and moaning socks.
Impatient pocket change poltergeist,
still reprimanding.
Bedroom doorway stuffed with uniforms,
caked with bronze badges.
Rattled, adolescent eyes stuck in the mail-slot,
awaiting sirens to intimidate unmowed lawns,
leaving them shaken and shaven in the wake of
Father’s Day failures.

Recently deceased military men, spangled,
legacy of pharmaceutically impaired wife swaps.
Chameleon tears adapting.
A widow is whispering a warning about the
secrets of strawberry season.

Wind of a woman passes you on a spring-lime bike
with no father to call and no husband to bother.

Fishing trips capsized in lakes of warm beer,
third degree barbeque burns,
fumigated fathers in weekend follies.
The scared noel, the football season scowl,
the slander of solutions for skulls full of problems.

Tye-dyed men playing disc golf
impersonating pregnant women with their beer bellies
blatantly missing the spark of birth or
careless, romantic cornerstones.

Father’s Day gifts,
promotional prostate exams,
pick-up truck fallacies,
the raindrops cheer you on,
the car commercials careening,
the debt is blooming.

How is your father tonight?
Does he have God’s golf shirt on
or is he lying in wait for the great cancer
to claim all regrets in a singular,
selfish swipe of earthly misfortune?

And to those who will never be referred to as a father,
wander,
while part-time dads are sleeping in
letting kids leave morning messages,
half-hearted love-yous.

But real dads work on Father’s Day,
because there is no sacred Sunday,
while false wives get together
to bitch about their absences.

Impotent, balding, break-even,
single parents we all become.
After turning down the sex of a failing marriage while in a daydream of lived-in boxes,
our aged gray is bled upon the cityscapes of forced careers.

No one offers to mow the lawn on Father’s Day,
no one moves an appreciative muscle.