Father-Son Soccer Game

Colts on newly won legs,

against a herd of fathers,

both stallions and jades.

But Jesus Christ!

Boys darting quick and graceful as tadpoles,

suddenly stopped as their shirts are grabbed.

Men high-kicking full force into a crowd of children.

Our children.

A red shirted mustache smashes a boy of ninety pounds,

and the child, moaning, clutches belly and head,

and then red-shirt angrily tries to drag him off the field

so he won't obstruct play.

Was that your own?

We grow older, my brothers, and so do our sons.

They grow towards hard-ons that crackle with electricity,

pulling so much blood from the brain that they faint in their tracks, hard-ons that ring,

while we droop and dribble,

glands as boggy as old sponges.

They run like heartbreak,

while the sawtooth beak stabs deep under our ribs.

They stake out their claims

like goats leaping from edge to crag,

their passion joyful, their anger joyful, their grief joyful,

their joy impossible,

while we compromise and sigh and call it happiness won.

But there'll be grunts of celebration

in the bedrooms tonight,

cause we outkicked 'em,

outfought 'em

and tonight we'll outfuck the little bastards too!

But I promise you, my brothers:

you will wrinkle and crumple like apples left in back drawers, juiceless and brown,

your fragrance a lie backed by no flesh,

and you will ache

and hurt

and your bladders will drip,

and maybe someday, these smooth-skinned children

will wipe your sagging, leathery asses,

turning their heads away.

And all you can do is pray that it is respect for your pride,

and not disgust for your smell.

For you will stink and grow weak

and someday you will die,

and no kick or smash of your child to the turf

will win you a single moment of time,

all you will lose is love,

that runs into the roots of the grass quicker than rain.

Your choice, my brothers:

gnarl like oak, tough and windburned, twisted and hale,

or rot like fathers everywhere,

who hate their sons for their sweet-skinned beauty.