Little Brother's Story

Mr. Doctor man of our bedroom gallows,

your scrip chains on his rank feet

may change his path of raging shameless

and bind him sideways in the city heat,

but he’s my brother—don’t you harm him

with your plastic glove by makeshift trick

tucked down behind your big white cape

when your act’s a rape and you make him sick.

See kid bro tries to be just like me,

in his cowabunga days so rad—

with his plaid shirt tied around his waist,

he was stinking in his pit-stained T’s

like an ugly grunge gang.

So turn his shirts to a b-o steam bath,

and his everyday stains endow—

but don’t chain his feet by yer pestle and mortar

or ring the sweat from his jumpshot brow.

For he’s been running—ragged empty

and leaves me tired in an angry mood,

for when his lewdness ends, I get the bends

on his puerile tact so rude and crude.

See kid bro was a snotty spit-ball

with dirty fingers and underwear

all bundled up and on the floor

after he scored it in the plastic hoop

on our bedroom door.

So turn his death dream up toward heaven

and his urinal to church stained glass,

but shame your specimen hands in the rapture

for he worships no mere goat’s green grass.

He’s been holding firm to nothing

and doesn’t doubt your cold handshakes

while waiting up for his later bedtime,

but you made him cry for goodness sakes!

See bro’s not your haemophile toy,

for news magazines, sterile scenes,

amphetamines, picky greens,

and vaccines in a juvenile ploy

to keep him clean!

So turn your prying to a glimpse at sunshine

and a wiretap to a “freedom glance,”

but when strung out on yer porno striptease

he's stuck off daylight in a maddening trance!

He’s crashing into all the brick walls cuz

he's gaming almost constantly,

but I want to keep him as that boy he once was—

that little thing trying to be like me.

See bro don’t fit your sick class,

unless you mean his little twin,

or as if a brain of tin is making him

change like that and get as crass

as he has been.

NEXT

--Porter Daryl's Poems