Father by tex norman

I wish I could capture my father
on the page. I wish I could
recreate him, no, reconstitute him
like instant potato flakes. I wish
sometimes I could whip up a batch
of daddy, and butter him up, recreate
him, like a Star Trek teleported being,
only this time I would leave the sharp
edges of him lost in space.

My father is still alive, but he is
dissolving, he is becoming a tincture
of time, a distillate of dolorous
disappointments.
I wish he could be
reconstituted like beef consommé,
only instead of water, I would
prefer to use words.

I’ve read what others have done when
they attempted to place there father
on a page, and some do a decent job.
As you read along the magic of the page
seems almost to fall away
and what was left was ghostly image of
the man that made them. There on the page
I can see their fathers alive, speaking,
the muscles of the neck and throat
contracting, words, like a heart,
causing the life to flow, through the words
their father moves and lives and has his being.
I ask myself why write about him?
Why would I want to write about
my father? I am a father as flawed
for my son, and he was to me.
Why go on this word search knowing
as I do that words would only firm
up my memories. I have the objections
shouting in my head, nevertheless this
nagging urge to write about him is constant,
consistent, unrelenting and as unavoidable
as gnats in the summer. I am what I am,
and I am how I am, because he was
what he was, and did what he did.

Was he like the Great Santini dad?
No, Santini was a drinker, a military
man who raised his child as if he were
a military recruit, a drafty from the womb.
My father was more like Mozart’s father
in that movie Amadeus.

My father wanted me to succeed, and
because he demanded perfection, and
I was not perfect. I was so clearly
imperfect my dad was always disappointed
with me, and perhaps, at times,
a bit disgusted by me.

“Well excuse me for living,” was more
than just a sarcastic phrase, it was my mantra.

Was every moment mean and monstrous?
No. There were good times? Yes. There
must have been good times, some time.
I’m certain there were good times.
There had to be little pockets
of air, a green oasis to sustain me
through and arid and unhappy journey
through childhood. There had to have been
a Kings X place, a hidey hole, a nook,
some niche, some cranny where peace
was secreted away. There must have been
such places in my past, of that I am
certain, it must be so, it just had to be.