I’m Not My Father

You were carefree, just being yourself in that photo from long ago, sitting at the table in a fringe coat with long hair and beard smiling like a Japanese bass player with hands clasped at your chin sending reverb over decades in a still shot. You laughed when I showed you the photo saying something about being a younger man who took acid to see God. I was a boy looking up to his father, seeing you as a laughing god, enticed by the mystery of what God must’ve looked like. I became a young man laughing at laughing gods. When you told me not to laugh I was enticed to laugh even more, to see the laughing gods again and more, to see you. See yourself laughing. See yourself as a god when not taking acid again. Laughing is God. You stopped laughing but I have not.