Show you care: Beat your kids

I took my first line of coke
When I was just fourteen
It made me feel
So grown up
I was an Icebreaker
I was a skyscraper
I was twenty-two stories high
I bled from my nose.

Daddy said I was a little slut
Said it wasn't good enough
I was a gazelle
I was wet with mother's blood
Matchsticks out of control
Red ends like boxing gloves

I sprawled out on the ground
When he smacked me around
With a fist then the back of his hand

See, Daddy knows what my nose now knows:

Bleeding's for whores
That fall to the floor
'Cause they can't stand up to a man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smile. You are now on candid camera.

I watched the old man
As he looked out across the lake.
Dead eyes hazy in grief
Yesterday he watched in disbelief
As they killed his son

He'd seen the soldiers
knock the boy to the ground,
Kick him up and down
the street
like a worthless sack
of rotten meat

They beat his arms and back with clubs
Smashed out his teeth
With their rifle butts
Slashed with knives
Stabbed and cut
They urinated
in his ruined mouth
Laughed and joked
As they put out their cigarettes
On his skin

Yet somehow he was still alive
And he opened his eyes
One last time
Before he died.

I wonder if he saw me
Take his picture