Freeform

High pitched giggling
Tiny hands grabbing my hair
Says “silly daddy!”

Little
Darling redhead
I ask for permission
To marry your mother, please
Say yes

I will
Make you pancakes
And watch cartoons with you
Curled up on a big comfy couch
With mom

You silly daddy
You already are married
You and my mommy

I hold a squirming baby who
Projectile vomits when she’s not crying
And I coo at her through 36 hours of no sleep
Facing the prospect of not being able to make rent
While my wife is sick and can’t move

All I know is that the little bundle in my arms
Depends on me for everything
So if I have to kill someone or rob a bank
To pay for her food and diapers
Then take me to Hell for doing it because
If that is what I have to do, then
That is what I have to do

Lady Grey, that fine old girl
Wrapped in her gossamer dress
She’s a tease, a total flirt
Drawing me in with her heady scent
Sliding smoothly across my lips
She tantalizes my tongue
Hot and wet, she tastes so good
But when she’s gone, she’s done

I am not willing to share a picture
Of my worst fashion crime
Because the image would burn holes
In the retinas of the innocent
And tarnish the minds of the youth
And make all that is holy, unholy

It would unmake your fondest childhood memories
And cast a shadow on your future
It would drive you to tequila — and if you’re already there
Force you to drink gin straight from the bottle
And I’m not talking about the good stuff, either
But bargain basement gin covered with oily dust

I will share a mental image, if you dare to read further
A short pair of cut off jeans, torn
Re-sewn together like parts of Frankenstein
Embroidered with symbols of anarchy
A red circled A embellished with black ink
And a rip in the crotch purposely left open

We should see if after drinking a
Whole lotta very strong barley wine
Poetry floats to the surface of the brain
Flowing, floating and flowing, spilling over
Like something not unlike vomit
Onto this big blank computer screen

While meanwhile deep in the bowels of a
Very powerful Texas storm
Several possible tornadoes, potential tornados
Tornadoes that are still just spinning air in a cloud
March insistently toward where this would be poet
Types these alcohol infused words
Wondering, hoping, praying for something so totally exiting
That it will rivet his readers here to this place
Hanging on every word, breath suspended
Waiting to find the symbols of meaning in these lines
To tell them whether there is life or death
After drunken Texas storm poetry

Somewhere over Newfoundland
To the south of the Labrador Sea
I am going 624 miles per hour
And wondering
If they serve beer in Germany
At 7:00 in the morning

While flying over Ireland
“Just passing through”
I realize that
Even though it’s very early
The wee hours of the morning
It is, in fact, St. Patrick’s Day!
And I’m not wearing even a spot of green

36,000 feet
Over the Celtic Sea
My body says
Night came oddly early
And dawn freakishly soon
Are you on drugs?

Jolly old England
Homeland of my love
I peer far below at cottony fog
And wave hello
At my future in-laws

My younger daughter felt
The simple pure joy that
Can only come from a new binder
Fresh flawless and ready to be filled
With white lined paper
And
Folders
Full of homework covered with doodled
Faries and little imps

I admit it
Freely, openly
I never tried to hide it
I am a total geek
I always have been
I always will be
Proud of it

There’s a man with a shovel
And a street with a hole
Red cones in the middle
You must pay the toll

With the rolling of the truck
And the rolling of the cars
We must keep them moving
Instead they stop at bars

Where liquor keeps on flowing
And naked girls will dance
With the shaking of their bodies
They will put us in a trance

So you fall into a dream
See the garden of delight
But the wheels keep on rolling
Ignore the flashing light

Past the red cone barrier
And smashing into trees
Tearing up the virgin garden
To spread this new disease

Where once was a forest
There now stands a road
And the man with the shovel
Has pockets full of gold