The first time I smelled you felt like deleting the weather
channel app & walking shirtless into the rain & laying down
in the tall grass until I was the tall grass. You were a wet plum
in my arms, pale purple & marigold, eyes sideways like lines
of morse. Ok fine, I cried but just a little. Your weightless existence
in a peacock feather filled with ink. I could have thrown you down
the football field of that 4th floor hallway. I could have tucked you
in my jacket & left, driven us to Rhode Island or Jeff City.
When we tied the knot it was 2 becoming 1 or something Jesus
approved, & now we’re 3 or 2 ½ or just a family of clouds
in the eyes of a duck at sunset. Your mother has been sleeping
all week today. That shows trust in us, hold onto it. You
will never be younger than the period on the end of this page.
When you open the Jurassic language of your eyes my world
will change. You’ll have a name, you’ll swallow it whole.

You took a shit on the floor & made a mural on the wall
with your forearms. Some days I wish you were never
born. No moral code outside your own cornucopia brain.
I want to pick up a hot tub & dump it on the animal
of your face. I want to baptize you in the name of fatherly rage.
You laugh soft & insane & those twin dimples beam
like stars from either side of your gaze. You rip
through me like a gun. You open my chest & inscribe
your place. I pick you up & for the next half hour am dead forever.

Today marks the last of the beginning of your life
inside the tire center of your mother’s body.

Today I wear a sailor’s suit & a sailor’s hat &
the mouth of a helium tank. I’ve been practicing this

gig like a Clydesdale in a wedding dress in anticipation
of your naked parade. No matter what you are

I want to call you Jo-Jo & dance with you on my shoulders
on a pogo stick to Mars. I would tackle the ocean

for you. I would spit in the eyes of a buried American
to hear you whimper helpless nettles. You want

a piglet? I’ll purchase the farm. You want a blanket
made out of angels? Consider my globed hands

heaven. Today I am not your father, not an animal
with a human face & a half-blasted job. Today

I am the energy connecting disparate worlds together
by eating vending machine delicacies, rubbing

your precious incubator’s legs & feet, cheering you both
on to Chapter 9: How to Control Never-Ending Light.

There should be a language for the day before the day
before. When stop signs bow low, the streets go holy noir,

when darkness is pure & the air inside a memory
leaks out to create something out of such a loud nothing.