the boy
all
of eleven
years

pauses
somewhere inside
his eleventh
cigarette
to say

earthly life
is god’s way
of telling time
and

as a father
who exists
only
to the kids
of others
I ask him
the whereabouts
of his
but hell

I know
before he tells me
the *******’s

with
my mother
writing ****
for his boy
to say
to girls