i recall my first bar fight
all skeptical eyes and words i needed to spew out  
filled with hatred and abuse and
screams of a twelve year old's pent up anger,
this isn't okay- they'll tell you it is,
perfectly normal for your father to
take you to christmas dinner
at the local bar your girlfriend tends at,
maybe this is when i learned to argue
maybe this is when i learned not to flinch
at the sight of your temper,
no, i flinched at my ten year old brother
in the smoke-filled billiards room, playing pool with
forty year old alcoholic men
no, i flinched at the sound of my eight year old sister
asking, 'daddy, why can't you drive straight?'
see- CP shuckers doesn't suffice for a visitation  
and maybe i was twelve,
but if my torn ear-drum could talk
it'd tell you that hit wasn't discipline
explaining why it was mommy's fault for leaving
isn't the fatherly thing to do,
the pernicious potential of keeping you in my life,
see- the risk was exponential.
the rain fell in ropes that evening and
it wasn't coincidence your three were
the only children there,
i spoke in roman numerals and
maybe that was the last time we really spoke,
maybe three years later i am really writing about it