ode to pokemon trainer Red

(B)             has always taught me to run
whether it be from a pokemon battle or an
unexpected visit from an actual bee’s noise.
i (B) run up stairs

like i’m sure to see my father. & i am not his,
just mine, & my thick hair twists, once in, now,
just now, an unrivalled out.         i barely
care about what he thinks about my hair,

the ones i love, the way i dress, the way i give love,
                  as i would barely,
remember my nintendo DS Lite. how it don’t
work no more ‘cause it had guillotined to
divorce right after the charger had broke.
i do remember
                  Ranger, & Platinum, & Diamond,
riddled quiet in dusted cases; each
pokemon game & cartridge i
had as all i had
                                    when
my father wasn’t there.                 & when my son,
Mew, reached level 100, i had made the best of
the hand      Oak      dealt me.                Red, Ash,   &
Silver

                    all dreamt my dream for a father
& i remember how they all never spoke. & i
remember whichever name you gave him

becoming the boy’s name. Silver’s mom got
running shoes from Silver’s dad.
Silver once bumped into a cave atop a mountain
                    & then found him – Red,
                    at its precipice,
                                    transforming into,
                    now, just now, a Mew

– with its hair returned untethered & to
     its original form; & so mindful
a Mew, in fact, he did learn how to learn
any move so one
                    might be performed like a dance which
might serve, like a mating call, to summon
                    a father who too                     searches for father.

remember? that conflict with Mew. once led
ash’s heart to petrified stone in the stale air. &
how diamond should sublimate to stale air,
a Pikachu’s tear once hauled Ash from his
cryogenesis, in fact, so well – Ash hasn’t aged
since, which implies Ash could die & get born
again & still have no father. we all remember

waking up alone & to a new mother, saying
                    not a thing
                                has changed,      not our father,      not
our mountains,     not Pokemon.”

          as fathers go unmentioned in the games
          until 2002,         my dad & i still don’t talk.
i wonder about how much it has to do with

being a father.    i go to capture
a moment’s truth & stick it in poems
as trainers (B) run to catch the Mewtwo
                                                  with just pokeballs.
i hope Red had taken time to write his
requiem for his lost dad, when trainer
Silver, had happened
to find him praying at the mountain froth.

perhaps Red caught a cold & this
father-poem needed to be about how cold &
alone Red felt. maybe his throat
hurt too much to talk so Red fled the fight
                                   in hopes to get a healing with
his father. maybe it was less of a (B) run &
moreso (A) jump; that his father was just
a sky away. just now.
                                    i (B) run up stairs like i will
see my own. in the sky. from the top step
of mountains until i’m downstairs
with my single mother again.