Renegade Status

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O the father was strange

like a smutty goat at the fair

with me in a little knapsack

he’d adorned in nudes to rile

the wannabe Nixon cow-

boys & Nixon bank tellers & sod-

busters & no coal miners per say

but little Nixon ballet dancers

& Nixon climbers of social ladders

& O the father was pissed

about Nixon & loud but festive

& drunk I know but loved

Wisteria which looked like grapes

in real life in Italy & on wall-

paper in Southwest Virginia

& loved Mark Twain & Pete Seeger

& washed my hair in Joy detergent

when he couldn’t get to the store

& said hamburger was dinosaur

& God was dead & honest I love

all woebegotten things like pigs

& birds midwinter. I love stars,

I love peaches, I love dogwoods,

I love asyndeton but not Nixon

& not war & venal plutocrats

& basic liars & bitches because

the father was strange & drunk

but bloomed like a fat moon-

flower inside dumbass little me

when I’d run off to mope

as I am doing now to escape saying

how the heart’s such a blowtorch

no matter how goofy & late the date.