TRUTH Vigilante: Ew, Icky. How Gross?

Any Other Fathers Out There?

Hide in your work, hide in your home?
One easier than the other

Your mother doesn’t veil resentment if
you’re looking for someone to point a finger at

accusations you learned to identify, mischaracterize,
were not identified by me as a man who learned

to self-correct

like toilet lids sent down, or closed mouth chewing,
how to tidy a split-level abode before she arrived home

from what-kind-of-day?

give me that heavy expression after a scan of environs

a chance to brighten?

Remember, I only live on one floor, and someday
my elevator won’t go all the way up

to drink beer with squirrels and pigeons
on our newly tiled roof, traction for tired legs safer,

so I can scan a neighborhood, watch and wonder
about other peoples’ houses, their young adults, and,

where they’ve gone

how mothers treat fathers, and their coping, as men,
as dogs in kenneled houses, if I’ll see any of them

in trees spying on others, spying on me.

What we escape as adults, no longer ruling a roost,
branches too weak, giants need pruning,

and no one builds tree houses anymore,
men don’t tinker in garages with saws and hammers,

but shovel a secreted spot behind the house to sit
on an ice chaise lounge next to the patio table
that has collected the pine’s end of summer offering
and nurse as many beers without getting caught,

avoid accusations an alcoholic, accused of wasting time
under the judgmental eye of a family looking up
after intensely staring at pixelated screens,
imitating what could be our reality, a loving, interconnected,
respectful co-existence that I somehow avoided

with your grandfather.

I view thin layered, pale walls we don’t wash.
paint peels off plaster between studs by the closet door
where I tried to fit my fist once, our first mortgaged winter.

And wonder begins: re-stir the old paint or
pick out new samples of something different?

Why home improvement when all anyone sees is a reality show
of 'how to' for its entertainment value, hyper-fantasize
what we dream as perfection, but cannot do: paint?

Look up from your distraction long enough for this land owner,
detractor, who can’t blend in to the backdrop, a drab scenery,
ironically, and tell me…how I…failed you…again?

She’s not home for another hour. Better hide.
Something is about to fully erupt like a vomit of words,
foaming on my mouth. One more winter storm delayed spring arrival,
collar and chain off, I will unhitch, and reclaim my worth,
right after another six-pack drained out back.

4.7.23