She raised her hands in hurry like the hackles on a dog
As everything repeated, disappeared into the fog
Another conversation turned to water with the air
And all of what she taught them wasn't present anywhere
She couldn't not remember when the past became today
The sum of what is hopeless and a place too far away
My sons will be my sons and even death cannot define
The battle I am fighting to restore their weary minds
And if I am alone inside a war I'll never win
I'll put my hands together and remain outside the skin
She'll never be forsaken by the thoughts that give her rest
The only thing a mother has, her sons to ever bless

Come Moroccan blue,
Wrought a Tokyo twilight;
The tangled neon, Guangzhou,
Ought London fog or gloom –
Entity’d ‘ever end with me.

So when gods plays jokes
Come a second near and nigh,
I’d nearly utter, “amen,”
Atop a belly, soon and son’s first cry –
I am a father; above, eternity’d grin.

So my plane kisses pavement, tepid,
Wrought one mother waiting; and
All I’d ran from, all abandoned,
Is now the only that’d welcome.
I’d never thought to nest, and yet –

Arrived, with straw in mouth.

How we treat ourselves
Is the tenor upon which we represent ourselves
The hell that raised us
Doesn't have to be the hell that sustains us
We are blessed to have our own minds
To choose the course we want for our own lives
Our course was meant to be a horizontal one
And it can only be undone by the One who called us to be his daughters and sons
We are not judges
We weren't put here to condemn
I believe it behooves all of us to leave that for Him
And while we may disagree whole heartedly by someone else's choices
What right do the rest of us have to be disrespectful and poisonous
We may have taken the traditional route and even made our lives better
But to make light of someone else's LIFE
Does little to make any of us better
It makes us lesser
Because in the end we are all the same
And we are all just one bad decision
From sharing the same blame

Dads,
Some kids we raise
Will abandon us,
Despise, deplore
And anger us.

     What can we do?

Some sons will denounce
To even some score;
Some daughters will leave
To dance and *****.

     Dads, we're trapped forever more.

Some daughters will stay
And tend the home;
Some sons will sit
In cold cells alone.
They're worlds apart
From what we'd expect.

     Dads, I'm not finished yet.

Some sons give sons their father's name,
Some daughters so proud they keep the same;
Some teach and preach and heal and toil,
They've learned their lessons well.
You're so puffed you're buttons pop,
You never want this life to stop.

     Dads, take it from me.

You've done your duty,
You've won the game,
Take it from me,
No two are the same.

Too little,
The rabbit,
Bukowski,

counted,
scheduled,
realized

that the clock
is unkind
and fate
unkinder,

In college
I went home
regularly

but the work week
doesn't have winter
or summer break,

and this town
isn't home yet
but it's the closest
thing to it,

Nights like
this I smoke
cigarettes on
my porch,

think about
what being a good son
is,

think about the nights
I didn't show up
for dinner when my dad
got home from his
forty hour weeks,

but it's all the times
I was there that bother
me the most.

How I fear for you

(And I have heard
the bullets
whine and miss).

Youth is a necessary fiction
of light and hope,
but fiction nevertheless.

War, death, disease,
disappointment and dread
stalk that silver road
you imagine before you.

I hope you evade them all,
and anyway it is pointless
to tell you to be careful.

Your lives are your own.

May your dreams,
against all my experience,
be just as you imagine.

   mce

Not an easy thing
to be the father of sons,
(of daughters I have none).

Inevitably, you must
disappoint them;
inevitably, they must
turn away from you.

Embrace the necessity
of this distancing.

Do not become
an impediment
to the world
they must inherit,
the world that
you can never know.

Be joyful.

Trust that what
you have planted
will flourish
beyond your reach.

Dream the futures
you will never see.
- mce

It's not really a long time
to some people,

In perspective,
the length of
the average life,

something like sixty,
seventy years

or in some cases
something like one
hundred and two
give or take a few

some poor *******
live into the hundred
and teens

How unfortunate,
How unlucky,
what sins must you commit
to be trapped here
that long

Living every day
waiting on death
like children wait
for the swing set

It's a long time
to me.

In my perspective
it's not three years,

it's not thirty-six months,

it's not one hundred
fifty-six weeks,

one thousand sixty-
eight days,

twenty-five thousand,
six hundred
thirty-two hours,

one million,
five hundred thirty-
seven thousand,
nine hundred-
twenty minutes.

In my perspective it's,
ninety-two million,
two hundred seventy-
five thousand,
two hundred seconds

of missing your first
steps,
not knowing your favorite
food,
not reading you Goodnight
Moon,
missing your Second,
Third,
Fourth birthdays,

not hearing
one hundred
twenty-six
million

heart beats.

It's pain that scares
the gods,

that demands
absolution,

and one day
when you read this

Know that I loved you.
Know that I missed you.
Know that once we find
each other again

I hope I'm a lucky *******,
sinless and pure,
that lives to see
one hundred
and twenty,
then we can share our perspectives
on three lost years

A story I read yesterday
about a father and son playing chess.
They were sitting over the board for hours now
arguing who is the king.
Which of those pieces wooden on that surface flat,
should be the one to be king.
The son was thinking and thinking, but he could not tell.
Troubled after a while he thought,
why his father asked him that.
"Who is the king? Who has always been king?"
Countless times before they played,
the question always remained the same.
The father, his son, he persistently asked -
who is the king?
The son like his father,
he wasn't an easy mind.
He wouldn't give up to a question so simple;
He was determined to prove his father wrong.
So many riddles by his father he cracked easy,
but this one, just wouldn't come to mind.
Protect it! Protect the king!
- said the father, with warm smile upon his son.
And the son deep in thought with fingers crossed
was just looking over the board;
..even more and more confused..
Moments ago I watched something.
It was a memo for a dead man.
On a beach that man was the father.
He played with his child around.
They were swirling in circles in the salty air,
before he rode into his last sunset.
Then the question hit me again - who is the king?
The screen went dark and the lights flickered to light.
Elevating murmur filled with clap, filled the room.
I turned back and I saw..
That father, that child, over and over again.
..everywhere, the whole room..
One jumping around, one sitting calm,
one excited, can't wait for fun,
the other just looking for his last piece of popcorn.
I watched upon those daughters and sons,
and then I realised who is the king.