Like this tire, hole blown through the sidewall,
my charity is deflated.
Even my car balked at this trip on a night
when the full moon chose to hide.
His eyes are more deeply set now
and the psychotropic haze screens out most,
but not all of the rage.
Carrying the legacy of institutional depression
in a waist now bulging the State Correctional Company sweatshirt,
He seems somehow a not-so-jolly Santa.
As he coolly refers to the other murderers like him,
I play with the letters, moving the "n" the short trip
from Santa to Satan.
Leaning back, he asserts that murder is just another crime,
that he always knew he would end up here anyway.
Unable to handle the truth of this could-be brother
who loves me like a would-be father,
my mind's fist strikes him off the reclining chair
and he rises...hovers...death's angel...
the demon in me.
Yet etched in his arm, like some HIV-coursing blue vein
erupting toward daylight are the names of his children.
The demon whispers to me about the symptoms of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
and the price children pay when limited, semi-conscious
parenting poisons.
But buried innocence in his withdrawing baby blues overpowers
with screams for me to mourn the ten-year-old in him
still bruised from daily beatings
and still hiding in neighbors' basements
to avoid Mother's latest lover.
So I paint the picture of happy, active, beautiful children
in the care of the loving family I've met
and promise to let them know that their Daddy loved them when they
someday seek him and find that his life sentence was short.
Changing the tire in the dangerous dark,
I wonder if the demon was defeated.
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| Copyright � 1996 Ian Lynch. All rights reserved |