Boyhood Game

My endless boyhood game: try to say something
around Dad without him coming back
with a homespun cliche.  

I’d say, “Well…”
and he’d say, “Deep subject for
such a shallow mind.”  

I’d say “I wish…”and he’d say,
“Wish in one hand, spit in the other,
see which one fills up first.”

“If only…” always led to
“If only a frog had wings, he wouldn’t
bump his ass when he jumped.”

Or my favorite, the all-purpose
“Shut up and give me
that Philips-head.”  In other words:

“Son, you’re better seen than heard,
keep that imagination on simmer,
hand me the damn screwdriver.

There’s real work to be done
for a real man who is busier
than a one-armed paperhanger

with an itch and madder than a sore tailed tomcat
in a room full of rocking chairs.
Real men live in a real world

where we don’t waste time
wishing or dreaming or coming up with weird ways 
of saying the obvious.  That’s

not work.  That’s not real.
Quit thinking of poetry, son.
I don’t know where you get that from.”