Daddy Drank
Posted by
Mikey Marlin
Daddy never built the ship in a bottle he spoke of those many hours
As the wind lifted water off the Atlantic and threw it into our
lives.
‘I’m gonna build me a boat my boy,
Gonna sail away. I’ve gotta finish my drink boy, make way for the
boat
In the belly of the fat round bottle.’
But boats are meant for sailing, Daddy
Not to be kept in cages of forest-green glass
Surrounded and trapped as stones that sink.At 42, I meet strangers on the promenade, on the pier, they look
twice:
You’re Mikey? Mikey Marlin?
Mikey, that’s your Daddy’s smile, you have his mouth, his prominent
lower lip.
Don’t you know you’ve got your Daddy’s eyes?
And don’t you know the way you drink that whiskey
It’s just the way your father did, shootin’ from his hip.
And frowning so Mikey Marlin, why? Your Daddy was the smiling type. No one knew why Daddy smiled so or heard his howling to the moon
when his liver packed in.
Daddy, Daddy, bounce me upon your knee
But Daddy was gone when I was born
Already sailing the sea and swimming for it,
Already sinking when I breathed, dying as I lived, crying as I grew.
Drunkards can be violent, vicious; cruel or detached or stern as
warders...
My father was a leaf
Wet through by autumn rain; pretty, red,
But crumbled to the touch. Leaves sail now in the gutter
Like Daddy:
He never built his boat, but he managed to sail too soon.
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