Writing The Pavements They Are a Mess

[Mitch]

[b]The Pavements They Are a Mess[/b]
The recurrent theme continues to play,
organs beat, the dancer in dismay.
Instruments to the bone.

"It is going to happen," says my father
as I walk upstairs.
Were those tears upon those eyes?
I felt his voice faulter, fall and sigh.
Heave.
And on it plays.
On it plays.

When I was a child,
a child of three years of age,
my parents divorced, gave their say.

My father's name was Tom Smith,
my last name is Smith to this day.
Tom Smith's middle name was Grant,
and my middle name is still that today.
He is my true father, the one whose blood is in me.
But I do not know him.
I never knew him.
Not even today.

A music box, open, it plays,
a dancer on the top spinning,
nice legs.
A face that stays the same
and gears that creak names.

The tune, proverbial,
she spins.
She is in a closet,
locked in.

And the recurrent time passes by,
the dust gathers on her thighs,
her eyes,
her lovely spinning form.
She was young once,
now full of scorn.

A hand reaches toward the closet,
opens it up wide.
Down falls the music box,
her inside.

The hand picks it up
plays it and listens.
The tune is slow,
subdued and whines.

In the garbage it goes.
Goodbye.

My real father used to call me,
ask me how my school was going.
A ten-year-old I would tell him fine,
then he'd ask me if I'd like to get my blood tested,
see if I was really his son.
I didn't know then.
Should've known, but now I know what's been done.

He didn't even see me as his son.

Never seen that man, not for a long time.
And he stopped paying my child support,
and he owes us money.

My dad just stepped in here,
there he was crying in his eyes,
he said whatever happens he always loves me.
Whatever happens.
Whatever happens he loves me.

He said it's not him causing this to go where it goes,
it's my mother who's doing it.

I shall not blame the ones I love.
Shall not chain the heart.
Shall not eat the raw tart.

She is the one from what I see
who has brought things to where they are.
But this is not my battle,
I do not need any scars.

What will be will be
no matter where you are.
And I will take them as they go far.

I do not know what to feel,
I do not know what to do.
Let things go the way they go?
I do not know.

My step father is more a father than any will be,
and my real father he is nothing.
He abandoned me, as a child, long ago.
Never came to see me grow.

He's black as a crow.

Of my mother there is much to say,
she smokes a cigarette each day,
she is depressed and on quite a many pills
which she too takes each day.

She does not love my step father anymore.
How that must be a sore.

How I saw, as I was upstairs a bit ago,
saw him standing there so cold and lone.
And she just would laugh, and give dirty looks.

It's just too much to go over,
too much to say.

I feel fine right now,
feel fine as I could be.

The recurrent theme, the music to my ears.
How it blears.