Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Father - Vampire

Another year older

I get vampires now

Now seven hours older, my eyes open.
It's Father's Day and I have to decide
how we'll celebrate.

No one wants to get up.
My wife prattles about this or that
and all I can think is hammock,
served mixed concoctions, woozily sleep
in the warmth, shade, whatever I need
during the quiet Sunday hours, to not think

of the college dropout,
the girl who became a boy,
of the woman who diminishes me for neglected chores
a day before my key to a city of redemption.

I can rule any way I know how --
chose a meal fit for a king. But, I idle in bed thinking
how can I appease them, make a right choice,
have a guilty pleasure, or two, like
a cigar I'd never smoke, fine liquor I never imbibe.

I can't choose. More alone, uncelebrated
and ready to be another day older like a vampire
who seemingly never ages because
he doesn't linger over a washed out image
in a steamy mirror -- a mix of blindness, forgetfulness
and deliberate fogginess to recollect a man free of family,

free to wave fully collected, blond follicles
and flex a steel body over four cylinders on two wheels,
to push this machine to 90 -- wheel beyond
well-traveled roads and find the hidden creek
where she laid on a river bank, drunk on beer
until stars melded into one raging fire,
fire I could stoke...

dim-lit, I draw the shades for another hour,
but not until night like a vampire, because
it rains this afternoon and they have other plans.


6.20.21
36 lines, free verse

I don't know, just went with it.
Thoughts of aging, worth, etc. as a man whose is supposed to be king for a day, I guess? Sounds like a character build up for another post 45 Tim Allen movie.