Boyo, you haven’t taken off your boots
in a week or brushed your teeth –
my son the Jack of Knives – you stutter Instagram
accounts of theft – how you cut blue
from black out of the night
and hid in the Dunkin Donuts until 3AM
when the police finally were gone,
the color drained from the face of the cashier
because he knew, he knew.
I heart you from safety
where I am not father to the chicken tenders
hardening under your bed –
can’t you manage *both* art and hygiene?
Do you have to put your camera
in my face, the shutter flicking open like the click
of a switchblade, mugging before the lens?
We scuffle about your overdrafts, my insistence
you return the stolen colors in your pocket.
For The Sunday Muse
qbit 
You paint his portrait so clearly I can see him, and the distressing chicken bits under the bed. I can see the pale face of the cashier, too. Wonderful!
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Thanks!!
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Oh I like this! It reminds me very much of the style of Grover Lewis, whose book made me fall in love with poetry, right down to the use of “boy-o”. The blender mix of the ordinary, like Dunkin Donuts, parental complaints, and metaphysical weirdness has made my morning , quite honestly. So glad you joined us at Sunday Muse!
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Thanks for having me! Glad you liked it.
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Great scalpel job on this pic, which has evoked a lot of feelings of unease, I think. I especially liked the way you dealt with this specific visual detail of the photo(which I also felt had to be included in some way in any poem take) “..how you cut blue/from black out of the night…” with the rest of that stanza building, full of menace and justified fear. Really a fine write, and as always when one stumbles on it in the vast scattered poultry feed of the blogosphere, a great pleasure to read.
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Thank you so much!!
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Beautiful.
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This ~~~ is a beautifully crafted poem. Thank you.
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The patience in the “safety” gave me goosebumps. That sense of wishing? hoping? that the things you see can be managed, cleared, and then survived.
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Very cool, to make this a son and ask “can’t you manage *both* art and hygiene?” That’s a way to distance the fear that he’s gotten something he won’t return, something that threatens the father’s existence. Sharp use of language and image. Mighty poetry.
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You have brilliantly dug deep into the image here! The voice and viewpoint from the Dad is wonderful! Love this!!
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Oh, this made me cringe and laugh as a parent. The art and hygiene – that’s a great line. And taking the photo where you did, that was some deft wordworking.
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Ahahaha, thanks!
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Even without the image, I see this very clearly in my mind.. Nicely done!
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“..how you cut blue/from black out of the night…” – Wow! Uniquely yours.
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Thank you!!
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