Broken Bottles

Dear Son:

I've seen you grow from a baby
Eyes skywards to jostle the Mobile above
Those pink, ceaseless working fingers
Finding their own madcap baby rhythm
Trying out the world for size

But now you are a man grown full into eighteen
years
Your cheeks have lost their youthful rosiness
Your fingers work on other things
The lines on your face lead to neon-lit
backwater streets
And Son, I Am afraid

You may think you know everything
But you know nothing
There is more to life than the inside of blouses
The inside of a bottle
The chamber of a gun

Do not follow
The merry road
That sparkles with red ink
The road that I took


Your loving Father
(With a bottle in his hand)