but
they could not appease me in my blameless infancy.
They
came with offerings and strewn them
‘round
the alter of my privileged immaturity,
gave
me a middle class yawn on a one-way backstreet,
gave
me a shrine I called my “bedroom” for a court of toys—
my
princely robots and racetracks—
Gave
me the words on my tongue and the brain on my shoulders
smart
enough to snuff the sad effigy
of
their parental deed with spoiled jealousy
but
not learned enough to sit and enjoy it long.
As
a kid I couldn’t be so easily pleased.
The
martyrs living long under the bomb,
those
nuclear ghosts and refugees of the primal scream—
They’re
buried down on Read Street forgotten as their stones
where
they dated rapists just to give me
a
healthy heart now blackened by the sweetest tar.
They
paid for my craving tooth in livelihoods and smiles,
fought
poverty with cunning to produce my butt-ugly mouth
and
wanting mind of sick ideas—
And
as a kid muddied in their ashes,
when
the graveyard became our game field,
I
showed my glut in whines and gripes and groans
when
they told us not to play there!
So
the fable gave up trying to convince me
of
the suffering and gave in to give me a good coddlin',
with
sliced bread, plastic rails, and clean pants to wear to school,
but
how could I wear them in a SOUL?
It
gave me video games to break in my hands and
filled
my life with pads and staples so I could sew a book
and
make believe I was a writer (so I could dog in the
ugly
pages now an invertebrate)—
But
pity’s no use when you’re standing
in
an ash grave scared it’s all no use,
making
up your video game wars to prove
you’re
just as worthy a "man" as the fallen were
when
you’re nowhere near as close.
--Poems from the Sprawl
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