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Family Obligations
He did his time in Macon. Fourteen hundred sixty days
to pay for his knack of giving old George and crew makeovers.
Never lonely, his family was there, blood brothers in the ways that counted.
They smuggled in goodies -- sausage, pastry, red wine and Cuban cigars
for Sunday's like home. Home was a wife and kids blinded by fur
and dance lessons. He was there to sleep and eat, to make promises
he would never keep. He knew they'd live no matter what.
The inmates cheered when he was in charge of the sauce.
Simmered in pots big as kiddie pools, the guards turned
their crew cuts and glommed the cannoli - so much better than jello,
and the smell made some teary-eyed for mama.
He traded his stripes for a black mourning band
when they found his daughter, needle dangling
from her arm, back in the neighborhood.
He flew home with hands clasped in prayer, ankles bloody and raw.
Escape, they feared. To where, he wondered.
She was buried in a pink casket, clad in Givenchy.
After the funeral, his wife handed him divorce papers
between antipasto and angel hair. His son drank wine like water.
He returned to a family who suddenly meant no more to him
than a bunch of guys who knew how to sneak in
decent plum tomatoes.
About Your Kid
You talk about which teeth are coming in,
as junior crawls, his coos drip to the floor
and pool around your feet, still flesh and bone,
before they lose their form and turn to clay.
I smile, inspect his little nubby gums,
you let him gnaw as he cries ma ma ma --
beware! The venom's brewing on his tongue.
It took me fifteen years to come to this --
demented mother, so named by my boy,
because I cry at times like five a.m.
when empty bed looks blood-soaked and a truck
or 22 or drug O.D. takes him.
All in my mind of course, as I'm a nut -
a wacko, psycho, nag and fucked-up bitch,
my feet sink deeper into graveyard earth
but still I have enough hope left to smile
for you and little mister perfect. Wait awhile.
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