Wayward Son

 

Skindeep 70 x 70 cm - mixed media on paper

 

 

 

AMERICAN DAD (A POSTHUMOUS LETTER)

 

Dear dad, don’t pull that guy

with slicked back hair through the window

of his idling Porsche. Don’t drop him on his face. Intersection

 

Hollywood & Vine, twelve lanes of traffic. Middle of the day!

Just because he flipped you off. And do

you have to shoot fur-bearing animals for fun

 

while you’re probably thinking about how many

hot dogs you’re going to gobble for lunch? Huh? How many

cups of coffee while you tell everyone at the diner

 

tales of your life, how you were in the 82ed Airborne, shook

JFK’s hand under the wing of a C-130 during the

Cuban missile crisis. How you cried when he was shot. Or

 

whenever you heard Caruso on the turntable. Like a Sicilian

hit man at his dying mama’s bedside. How you made everyone

seek cover as you sized them up as targets of opportunity

 

in the war of survival, or calculated the best

way to shoot down a young man’s lightly feathered ego.

                              from 23 on

                              I was gone

Still, there’s no getting away from these people. Sometimes when

I’m shaving, he says, Boy, you look just like me.