This was also written at the beach.
It's called "Father's Day," and it was written on Father's Day.
Happy Father's Day to the bums, to the ghosts, to the crooks.
Happy Father's Day to the ragers, to the drunks,
to the sops.
To those who stopped sending the support checks,
forgot junior's big game, happy day.
To the dad who shaved his weeping lad's head,
leaving little nicks with the dull blade,
to the one who paid a tart to get his minty boy
laid, happy, happy day.
To the angry cop stomping while his son
hid in the dust underneath the porch
or threatened to shoot his girl from the tree she climbed,
the one who in the bath put a rough, nailed finger
up his boy's pretty pink behind, today is your day.
To the one who sat on the edge of the bed
to tell the kids he wished their mother dead, we remember you.
Your moods and your smells, your love
like a pale thing creeping at the bottom of a well.
If there's a hell, it's full of dads.
So sad.
And we, their childless children, it all stops here.
Kids, you're in the clear.
The high, clear air that is nothingness,
blameless, and brainless because you
are lifeless and ageless coming into this world only
on this page.
Your little undone life, no wife, no strife,
not anything at all.
Last call at the empty airport bar,
we're all just a burnt out star.
And dad is dust and sand in a sack,
a black spot in the road, a toad I rode over with the Jeep.
I didn't mean to.
I didn't mean to at all.