Daddy-Daughter Dance – fifth grade

Do you have any idea how much you have made it hurt

To be her father;

The additional weight stuffed in the school bag

Father Daughter dance in January

Everything back in that town like walking into the mouth

Of the Dog from Hell saliva like ashen paste

To supplicate progression in the retention of the bar stool

To sit back and slop suds imbibing the lunacy of a country harvest

I have had to let it go; the idea that I will ever function

With love itself, not because the dearness of her

Feels like the putrid distance I feel sorry you retain

But just the hurt of being dunked on a two week cycle

Back in that drunk-tank of strawberries and Nashville-pop candy-butter

Slathered on in hay rides, Jesus, and razor blade pecan-barbed wire crusted pies

Milked from your sagging tits from the kid you had with him and not me

The house we built I drive up to alone six years later

Wanting a damn passenger for my seat like I was not such a god-damn loser

Outnumbered four to one at minimum picking up our progeny

Reminding me how much I try to convince myself I am built for something more

Than being a husband, a father, surely that hum-fuck town

But not her as children lie dead, she’s the one kept to breathe soccer and tween-dom

Bordering on the knowledge of what testes, ovaries and adultery do

I am embarrassed by the idea that I am still stuck in the existential

This forward is always a reverse out that acre sized drive way

Avoiding the diaper boxes by the curb you leave out on Sunday nights

As I return the fifth grader to drive an hour south to New Orleans sleeping in music

Too loud and artistic to fit in with the Clear Channel Country you suck-up

Sycophant-industrialist go down on Ayn Rand and slurp you a wet one!

I just want to run some nights after all these years and pretend I am not a dad

Because she has your husband like you always made her call him at six year old t-ball

I guess I forgive, get over, some days when the fog clears I remember

Anger still thunders not because of what you did or do, but at myself

Because some days I don’t want to

Some days I don’t want to be her dad

I am disappointed in myself for that, just dying, just god damn dying

Waiting, hoping for something in the tangible to change it all

My miracle, like I deserve one

And I see your life, that giant porch mansion monster we built

The husband the son to pair with our daughter, a new penis to bend

An upper tax bracket and vacations like rain and I see how empty you are

Because you know I know

And that makes me the greatest threat in the world

So all of it, all of it, the lies, the lawyers, the theater

I am like nuclear waste to you;

I have moved seven times since the hurricane and I am tired

I have another realtor and sign out front

These hermetic tendencies piling into a writer’s alcove in the Marigny

Wanting different, thinking so, feeling a drought

Praying to who, praying for what, just faith one day

Something will grow

Peace