Saved Us All The Grief

I have had my good days
And I have had my bad,
But mostly they just slid on by
As I was waiting for something else.
~
All through my childhood
I was waiting until I could leave home.
The play was good,
The work was bad.
~
Mom and Dad both had
Dropped out of school
In the fifth grade
To go to work, help make a living.
~
They set no store in education
Why should they?
They were making a living,
Keeping the kids fed.
~
The Mill paid Mom
More then driving a truck
Did Dad.
She bought a new car every year.
~
Every weekend Dad
Was drunk as a skunk,
And out carousing around.
Mom would scream and holler
~
She would pour out
All his liquor she could find,
He would just buy more
And make her madder yet.
~
Hollering and screaming
Over this and that
All my childhood long.
She should have just let him drink!
~
How Dad love little brother
No feeling for little sister
Who Mon loved dearly
I was odd man out.
~
Mom seldom stood up
When Dad picked on me.
A few times she stopped him
Before he beat me to death.
~
The other times he stopped himself.
I learned that to cry to soon
Made the whopping last longer,
But if I didn’t cry it went on.
~
Sister, Brother and I
Were as tight as Irish triplets,
And you never heard
“He did it” from any of us.
~
We bit our tongue
And took what we had coming
They got their spanking,
I got my beatings.
~
So through my childhood I just waited
Until I turned seventeen
Then I left
To the USMC
~
As soon as I left Mom
Took Sister and Brother up North
Little Brother made his deal
And went back to live.
~
I was just glad to be free of that
But she ought to have
Done it when I was four
Saved us all the grief.
~
And maybe I would have grew up
Thinking I was worth a damm.
Not have to lived so long
To get started down the right track.
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©
Rexx