Poetry- This Man

This man, this man, he’s so impatient

practically posses no potential to even approach perfection

he keeps p-p-p picking at his hands where the needle marks are because his arms are too precious to him

and his place settings are plastic because he possesses no patience to wash them

I mean, he’s basically a on the border between petty and poor,

so picky yet so broke and this man,

this man

pays with penny or plastic, depending on the pay period and I watch him

put his pint on the counter, while he carefully counts his very last lucky quarters before draining a d-dragons spitting fire and bourbon down the back of his throat

he’s burning the demons inside of him but he's only burning bridges and crushing boats that are bringing him closer to the bottom

and now he’s on enemy turf and there is no turning back now for the better because his drunken sides got the best of him

he begged his demons not to beckon him but they didn’t get the message that was lost when he broke open the bottle

it drifted away in the sea of liquor with along all of his problems

you see, it’s bitter sweet, the reality of being a drunk that is

the message never reaches shore because he’s riding a sinking ship

now he’s drowning deep in the waters dragging down deserts and daughters, things that aren’t supposed to get wet

he’s watered a cactus, left a cup of water on wood without a coaster to keep its condensation from staining the counter

he ruins the picture

the family portrait depicting a paper family that’s been printed and pressed into perfection

it’s all been lost and forgotten

my father pays with penny or plastic but pays no mind to the paper

my father you ask? My father I say

a figure, no, more of a facade that slips into my life as quickly as he fades away

but not as swift as his drunken slurs or quiet as his black out nights

he comes in as disruptive as my st-st-st-stutter is to my syntax and I apologize for only being able to annunciate soundly when I aliterate my sentences

so please forgive me

It’s just that

having a father who has so little regard for those of whom he created from his own loins is harder for me to wrap my tongue around than it is my mind

I’ve lived with it for so long that it doesn’t b-b-bother my brain but I do tend to bite my tongue and hesitate to say

and hesitate to say

that I don’t love my father. Not the way I used to anyway