Familial Jalopy
Simmer down for a moment
my restless child and just sit here beside me
for there’s a “Thank the Lord”
story just bursting to be freed and retold.
It’s about a boy your age
who sadly understands living in dire poverty
under a leaky cardboard
lean-to with neither security nor wind control.
He once had a proud Daddy
who worked himself into a premature grave
and that left his Mama
a little crazy, while it ripped at her grieving heart.
The preacher and her
many sad friends made every human effort to save
her from slipping over
the precipice of sanity yet she withered, part by part.
When she passed, no
hearse and fine casket, just a pine box and a panel van
carried her off to potters field
for a simple burial under a most threatening sky.
His boyhood came to a
screeching halt that day he must now seek to be a man,
this stark realization was
so up in his face that he could spare no tears to cry.
You may ask why he had
to strike out on his own, would no relatives take him in
to the bosom of their family
and share their worldly goods and their ample love?
Self-servingly stingy is
how his kin were described, so his options were quite thin,
and being a fifth wheel on
a wheezing familial jalopy is not what he dreamed of.
He remembered an overpass
that housed others who had been thrown to the wind,
earning his mock degree as a
structural engineer with remnants from the super mart.
Now you’ve seen his dilemma
but have you figured out how this story should end?
When you crawl into your
warm bed tonight keep that less fortunate boy in your heart.
Submitted for Word Painting with Jackie (poetesque)
By AlwaysMyWords
© 2012 AlwaysMyWords
(All rights reserved)
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