Words for Engineers

When my son was born,
he came out of the womb laughing.
With a smile etched into his bone structure,
punctuated chuckles
and hair that reached for the stars

like his endless imagination to dance with them.
See, he and I...
well, we spent most of our time in comic books.
Drew memories out of cartoons and bowls of cereal
nerf guns, and toy soldiers
and oddly enough, during his childhood,
he was my hero.
He wore Batman pajamas
wrapped himself in pillow cushions and draped curtains over the sides
so he could hide inside his own personal
bat cave
right inside our very own living room.
See his smile-
was the universe.
Especially when he lost his front teeth. His gap
would have made the distance between us and moon
seem nonexistent.
He was everything I could have asked for,
creative clay ready to take over the world any day now,
or atleast
our living room. And thats what I miss

because there's been some changes that have made us strangers
to each other.
And after he lost his mother,

I wasn't really sure how to reach that super hero
inside him anymore.
How exactly I could reconstruct that child
into stars and endless smiles.
So I watched him search through galaxies of drugs,
through relationships that ripped more sections out of him
then King James,
and I couldn't help but feel blamed when he came home
raccoon bruised, chipped tooth and stumbling.
Taking on groups of bad guys that
he couldn't fight off anymore.
I watched his anger grow like his hair, afro into holes in the wall,
shattered bathtubs and broken nuckles.
And by that time,
I couldn't even recognize the son I once
built forts with.
So I tried giving him guidelines, borders and guidence
forgetting that heroes tend to make
their own boundaries.
Their own moral codes and I always wondered if the shows he watched
ever revealed what it would be like
if he would just
believe again.
His clay had hardened, becoming this stoned figurine of a child who breathed and ate dreams,
and now his diet was ecstasy, and lsd or anything else that could bring him back to his
bat cave.
I wanted to jump into his mind through his ears and find
that kid of mine. The one I lost somewhere along the line,
who didn't know what death looks like,
who didn't know that kemo can turn organs into
yellow skin that his mother told him

was simply just a darker tan than his.
But my nature
is to be a man.
And so when I tested his boundary and replayed
repressed images of beatings, and being jumped
he jumped into his cage
where fists and momentum is all he speaks.
And as we danced, seeing stars and police sirens and bloody front teeth,

I saw him leave my reach for last time.
Now leaving to be a number in a cell he never dreamt of.
And as much as I want to jump through phone lines and
force him down the right path again,
I can only sit idol.
Flipping through memories of comic books.
Cartoons and bowls of cereal.
Knowing that his smile

contains my universe.