Fathers and Sons

ADDED: A primer for those who don’t know why NYFG fans hate the PEs (and, yes, of course, the NEPs too.

ADDED: Exhibit A & B.

How I Feel Now that Philadelphia ("Ptui!”) Is Going to the Super Bowl

How I Feel Now that Philadelphia (“Ptui!”) Is Going to the Super Bowl

 

There is the boy and there are the certain facts of boyhood
(Though nothing autobiographical
Is ever really deduced, is ever really reducible).

Yet the boy’s whole story is as any boy’s life, full
Of moment and followed by others, messily progressing
Along in the plain old myth-telling style.

There was the boy and his father — a fact which must go
Unverified as a creature’s cause. That which didn’t
Make self, though, inherited at least this knowledge:

There is the father and the son – met in boisterous love of sport
Which welded the lessons of thunderous anger
And the sadness hidden in laughter’s cloudbanks.

The boy’s hand consumed in his father’s, they would walk
The yard, policing November’s washout of light;
Spring would arrive only later in the Sun’s cult.

But now was the time to take all of creation into account,
To find the faults in the earth where hide the virtues
Of fathers, to corral the sins of the sons with a hard stewardship.

In these wintry days, the son played Icarus with his father’s
Crafted matchstick ships, motorized by cleverness;
Or played Phaeton pilfering matchbooks and cigars; or Ganymede

Holding the cold brown bottle of Olympia beer for
Father Zeus watching Sunday football, weighing and sighing
In the gridded and hashed balance of his favor-fought heroes.

Thus, Zeus’s gaze fell shadow-like on the U.S.S. Missouri’s
Jacked keel, but withheld just punishments for playing
Fire’s innocence, and hounded the N.Y. Giants weekly battles

Against his patience – all things that youth reaches for
In the hardened hands of time, the works and ways
Of which the golden scales tip in a boy’s growing favor.

Comments

  1. Quin Finnegan says

    I feel yah, bruh. It’s a tough time for sons of a certain age. I like it because I can cut and paste a few lines and call it my own. Right down to the Olympia beer.

  2. Big Jon Bully says

    Great poem, man.

  3. Big Jon Bully says

    Did your dad ever drink Brown Derby?

    Thanks for 14.

    • Dad was always a Ballantine guy, actually. Still is. (Made in Milwaukee but only available in and around NJ. Sad.)

      He used to call Ballantine by the bottle “greenies” until they changed from green bottles to brown. He won’t call them brownies.

      That said, I’ll have to ask him about the Derby. Wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

      JOB

  4. Broderick Barker says

    The year you guys had, you must have seen this coming.

    • Hell, l I knew WE weren’t going anywhere. But anyone – ANYONE – but Philly!

      Cowboys even.

      JOB

      • Big Jon Bully says

        A guy on local sports radio called those fans “a disaster” and it’s hard to disagree. Philadelphia police actually put criscoed utility poles to protect them from rioters.

        When Seattle won in 2013 a million people came downtown for the parade. No incidents.

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