Manly Men, Not Men

In construction business men champion the manly.
The gruffness of slamming a cup of mead
on table filled with cards comes to mind.
More specifically the howling one hears
as a female, attractive or not, walks by.
Standards, my friends, are very low.

Today, working with lumber
I got pitch stuck to my hand.
In fact my fingers are stuck to this pen
in some poetic way.
So I feel I must write of a friend’s sadness.

My friend who could be called a man’s man,
expressed a simple sadness.
The sadness you see in the eyes of a foster child
before his parents are taken away.
You see my friend’s father,
another man of the manly,
once turned his back on a child.
A schism in the family left my friend with no father
to show him how it is to be a man.
So he became a man’s man, not a real man.

The sadness slipped into my friend’s face
as his father by chance passed by.
My friend flush red sadly said “hi.”
His father looked back and nodded,
with childish eyes.

The father was a child just like his son.
He gave up being a man when he gave up on his child,
now they are both only men of manliness.
It is nothing more than a child
pretending to be a man by howling at women
and drinking too much beer.

I only hope my friend won’t do the same
and will love his child in the way his child should be loved.
Then maybe someday he will be a real man.

Fathers love your sons
Sons love your fathers
Because I never want to see this sadness again.