SHADES
for fathers
I.
Eager and unfamiliar arrived at his front door,
a dawning clasp of his genetic secrecy,
the daughter scraped from his youth’s womb.
17-year-old reminder of his off-kilter life,
eyes drunk on Father dreaming,
a second child, born first.
Her breasts carry a plume of mudslide lineage.
He had turned on the faucet, left it running
since the ’60s,
there could be hundreds of sapphires
cut from him, he wouldn’t know,
couldn’t remember,
was too busy balancing the language of Feel
in the center of his handstands
for waitresses on smoke breaks.
Emotional show-off.
The mother never told their daughter.
There was no real respect in them,
those beatnik-nacks she’d twirled in bed sheets with in the ’60s
who only extended deep predilection
to Peyote, Indians and Art.
Daughter sweat out the mold of possibilities,
assumed it had to be Charles Manson.
Never trusted a home-cooked meal again.
Sorry, Topanga flower children,
ladies o’The Summer of Love,
The “Sexual Revolution” is on you.
There was love and there wasn’t.
Staring at this foreign offspring,
his eyes drooled curiosity.
Somewhere he’d made a sculpture like her,
wings and scapula, balking its wide back.
He wanted to measure her details.
The same nineteen finger steps
from his daughter’s navel to her chin
as it was to her mother’s, all those years ago.
They must have the same stretch marks
in unusual lighting,
the same clavicle bow to his arrow.
Same solid press of her toes in the night
like a bike peddling to a taste through the fog.
He reached for a curve,
a beacon of his ancient edges,
the kind unquestioned,
statutory sun-screened.
Burn proof.
His fingers went
gracelessly.
Who was he once?
“Dear Father, you are not home.
There is love and there isn’t.
I am not home.”
II.
A woman came out of the liquor store,
toupee grease on her thighs,
socks stuffed in her pockets.
She spotted him mid-motion,
buckling a seat belt,
wrapping a scarf around his neck.
Probably made by his daughter, that married asshole.
Yes,
his prescriptive bad boy healing routine said,
as she asked for a ride to a motel.
Her eyes weighed oceans.
His hands gripped at 2 and 4.
She wanted the dollar bills poking out of his cock,
his turquoise rings to ping in glossy gut liquid.
Stop here, she said in front of Oceanside Motel.
He signaled pulling over, his blinker a dirty spark plug,
each click a thud from his mid-40s’ pillow fights,
the bed frames he’d swung from
like a Chinese star into baby teeth.
As his foot performed flamenco on the brake pedal,
she reached across and touched him.
A past does not promote new dance moves.
No one discovers style by doing the right thing.
Still, his passenger seat swallowed her proposal.
There would be no chemical emancipation,
no rubbers strewn on the hospitality carpet.
No florescent bed-bug after-glow.
The car shook for both of them.
She needed the money or would die
with a million scars unanswered to.
But there were no wolves left in him.
No more questions.
He handed her a hundred bucks,
the green to go
without owing him.
He was growing younger and alone.
She pulled at her pantyhose,
parachutes released,
jumped from the car with Fuck You’s in her gums.
Before crossing the street, she turned,
ran back to his driver’s side window,
leaned in and hugged him
held him
hugged him.
Thank you
Welcome