He knows his way around a hatchet
  while also knowing a fire grows bigger by what you feed it.

He'd flirt with your brother while breaking
  the mean rooster's neck and then send both on their way
  both running as though they've lost their minds.

His belt buckle: average as a maize field. His love-handles: porcelain.

He drives a small truck without a lift kit: he's a private kind of monster.
Two cans of tall boys sweating in the cup holders.
Why care about the law when it doesn't care about him?

He's got magic hands in need of a blood-oath or a spit-shine.
The dirt under his nails, he's been told, tastes like old pennies.

He's got eyes that whisper I've done seen some shit
  spoken in the dialect of duct-taped dreams.

His beard, well-groomed under the sun: the color of pure rust.

Tobacco-stained fingers and teeth in his own reflection
  reminds him of limp daffodils and old china.

He was baptized in a creek and dies before God every time
he kisses or fools around with just about anyone.

His patience unearthly as other men eye him as though
  they want to bust his lip or take a piece of him.

His shadow trails him like a hungry dog, nipping his heels.

He's learned a couple of things recently:

cracked-knuckles, oil-stained paints, and gritty palms
  define the effect of a job, not masculinity

&
if a man says he's never seen another man cry
  he's either filled with stone-solid bullshit
  or he's lying like a snake on its back

&
no matter what any Republican says it's always the person
who says one thing and does another that ends up in hell.

If you kiss his collarbone, he'll pray to his non-existent God,
  the same his mother raised him under,
  to curb-stomp the lonely out of him.

He practices his love giving the same way he swings a hatchet:
patience, timing, a good vision of the future,
and when the time comes to let go
he lets love go.