Spoken Father

He doesn’t carry his children’s pictures anymore,because seeing their images on Kodak refine paper is no substitution to the sound of their laughter.His sides are still hurting, hearing his 5 year old tell the tale of his now famous spider bite,and he still can’t get the story quite right.The few images that he has of them, eats away at him. He spits on mics to read and recite his history,he stares out at crowds an all he can see are their faces,pushing him to move the crowd ,always showing that they are proud to be descendents of his seed.giving him roars of applause before he even starts the piece and a piece of him dies.He pauses just to cry,so he can savor the salt of his tears to remember that he is still someone’s daddy.He would love nothing more to be their personal caddy,but his hustle is pimping progressive poetry,Not just wanting people to perceive him as a poor poet.Penning is problems on paper and performing, but at night,he lies in borrowed beds and prays “Father forgive me.”He walks into venues in his poetry ho suite and he sells his CD’s $5.00 a piece.Thinking about his next sex piece to get the money to feed his babies, because they are mentally and emotionally starving to be with their Daddy. I understand your struggle my brother as you struggle to maintain some sense of what your psychology degree calls “sanity”. And sometimes you stand within the four walls of your mind, just to scream at yourself that you are not crazy for leaving your babies. You design dreams of a better tomorrow, for the better pieces of you to know that you were fighting to be the man that you never had positive examples of becoming. You were more than just
A black man,
a white man,
a Latino man,
a hu-man.
That no longer wanted to live life through still picture frames, but wanted to die just to live for his children to say his noble name: Father. Father will never be a foreign word on their tongues. They will never look further than him to see what love feels like, what compassion looks like and what fighting for what’s right taste like. So yeah he never carries their pictures, because when he blinks, he sees them on the insides of his lids and when you see his blinks set on repeat,
he is watching their lifetime movie.
The newness of their birth still lingers in his nostrils,
and while he constantly exhales constant praise for them since their earthly introduction.
He simultaneously inhales into his lungs their innocence
which he uses to keep his blood moving because he no longer has a heart,
it was taken when mother earth, gave birth, to his Perfect Poems.
Even the groves in his hands have maneuvered themselves to spell out there names.
So when people ask him if he misses his kids, he says no.
He says they are here in the space that protects his soul,
they cover him,
they heal him,
missing them is not possible.