Mens Rea

I traded in my baseball cards and coloring books for a speed kick,  

and once the needle dried up, I bartered it for a lifetime of bibles

and screaming withdrawals,

and now I'm a happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy

lamb.

Kids, Alright!

the children draw in the abstract.  lines that don't fit quite right, color schemes that make little sense, and proportions that stretch the imagination as far as it can bend.

the adults smile and place the drawings on the symmetrical refrigerator doors of their neatly aligned suburban floorspace.  But every time they see it out of the corner of their eyes, they sweat with nervous impulse.  The triangle of a hat breaks open and floods color, the words 'I love you' seem to have been pasted together like a ransom note, from a million newspaper clippings, a separate dimension and thought and color for each letter.

The children declare their love in crackling voices that scream and cry at the same time.  Maybe they are conveying a thousand emotions, maybe two, but never one.  A child's mind is never in one place.  The adults smile but can never truly return this complex form of emotion, pasted together from a mind not quite at ease, drawing half-formed circles instead of morse code lines and dots.

For our sanity and theirs, the older we grow, the more trained and deliberate become the words.  I love you.  One mind.  One emotion.  One life, one death.  One lie.

And in our most insecure moments, we awkwardly grip the shortened, blunt crayons and start to dash it all over the walls without thought and malice. 

And then our fear of steadily declining property values sends us spiraling back to earth.

Silly children.

Seven and a Quarter

7 and a quarter what I work for and pay for and die for and try for, to come home and sit and blow it off on drink and to think and forget the rotting stink and a day later and go back to 7 and quarter the price I'd victimize, stigmatize, sexualize, murder and scheme and dream today and rob you blind to cop some porter cause I'm slave and a killer to 7 and a quarter

7 and a quarter is the price of my silence cause I've got dreams too, from the bank on loan to the road alone and I stretch my hand out to you and here's my mind to find in the dark of a car or catching your breath from behind bars with liquor on the beat and cops knock you to your feet on a salary more than yours and can afford some oppression with a stick they extend like a hand in the dark cause daddy he never lit the spark never told you good was bad and work til your dead cause that'll make you happy, and if the slavemaster's name sounds like law and order, then I'm just a slave to 7 and a quarter

Living wage runs away on a bumper sticker stuck to a car I can't afford pray the Lord everyday and smoke your troubles away, trade Gold for Jesus and bullets for the Devil yet guns shut the mouths of hell's little rebels, maybe save up on 7 and a quarter and one day you'll be a soldier of fortune with your guts spilling out on some rich family's meal and then you're caught running before you can reel and its the love you steal day by day that you thought could keep the hate of ages away but it don't and your dead but your body still moves and you're drugged with the weight of a shame you can't lose, and there goes 'living wage' on another car you can't own, you're a dog so eat shit or break out the bones 

School Days

you look forward to the days when the weather man, with his metered-pointer so reminiscent of Catholic school nuns who smack the map as if they were at war with Geography itself, points to your dark corner of the world and lets a smiling dark cloud precipitate on your town.  the days where its warm and sunny, you watch the window and some ecological spirit draws images of couples and friends taking in the warmth, and the window stays clear, and though you seem to be in a position of power looking at the window frame like a movie, your hands never reach through, but always stop and end the game of miming you play in your lonesome boredom.

but the rain, it fogs and streaks the windows, and you can smile at ease because it seems to cry for you, and the heavier the rain the more you know that everyone is stuck inside.  So now you can watch the window-frame like everyone else, like the feeling of warmth and company of the world premiere of a sitcom, the sick pleasure you take in watching the same corporatized adverts as everyone else, and you shout from the rooftops, your voice ugly and crackling, but the rain drowns it out, and the kids are all at home, and for once you're not alone, you're not alone.  Take a walk, and then you'll never walk alone.