We interrupt 1968 to bring you this poem:
Mea Culpa
Mea culpa:
If anyone were so bereft
he couldn’t do a simple thing like not snore,
he certainly should be land-damned.
Mea culpa:
I lacked the wherewithal I needed,
to survive a decade plus shear terrorized
by experts at school, and a talented amateur at home,
please excuse me, no, not an excuse,
an explanation: I was damaged.
Mea culpa:
Who needs a mother’s love? Who?
Babies, that’s who,
and I had it for a year or two,
so what’s the big deal?
Stop your bellyaching.
Mea culpa:
I was his namesake, his son,
and I even looked like him.
But people show love in different ways,
it’s only human nature.
My little sister missed him more than I did
when he stopped coming home from work.
I think we all wondered what we’d done.
Mea culpa:
I’ve never been a good bread winner.
It’s not the work part, work I can do,
it’s the job part, there’s never been one I could stand.
So exposed; temperamental; anxious; and those people!
Make a note: never hire this guy.
Mea culpa:
I can be charming, but I’m not very nice.
It comes out finally, the real me.
I try to be polite, but finally I just go off,
Old Faithful, that’s me, just wait.
Mea culpa:
I tell people that I love them,
it works sometimes, I get what I want.
Honestly, I don’t think I have it in me.
My fault, I should have tried harder to learn.
Mea maxima culpa:
I have chosen to waste my talents,
a serious affront to god.
Chosen never to be happy, chosen to push people away,
a serious affront to society.
I lacked character and chose indolence over industry,
unproductive, leaving nothing behind.
Mea maxima culpa.
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6 comments:
Wow, that makes two of us. -P.N.
Thanks for the comment Phil. I suppose that all of this is what made me the charming, cynical, polite, depressed, entertaining but doom struck man that I am today.
Who is Phil?
Too bad you carry so much baggage it must make life hard. I wonder what your family thinks.
The mother of a 5-year-old-boy and her live-in girlfriend have been arrested in connection with what authorities describe as "unbearable physical and psychological abuse" of the child, police said Saturday.
The mother, Starkeisha Brown, 24, turned herself in to the Los Angeles Police Department's 77th Street Division station late Friday night after officers made a public plea for help in finding the women and released their pictures. Brown was being held without bail on charges of torture.
The other woman, Krystal Matthews, 21, was arrested Saturday by detectives when she showed up for her appointment at the county Department of Children and Family Services. She was being held on $100,000 bail on charges of willful harm or injury to a child.
Police said both women have a history of violence.
The boy, who was in guarded condition at a local hospital, was rescued Monday by a stranger who found him abandoned and called authorities.
On that same day, the two women had an appointment with the Department of Children and Family Services and had brought the healthy child of a mutual friend and tried to pass him off as Brown's son.
Police said the women routinely beat the boy, forced him to put his hands on a hot stove, burned his body and genitals with cigarettes and often would not let him eat or drink.
At a news conference Friday, LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell said that because of the burns from the stove, the boy no longer can open his hands.
Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD's Abused Child Unit said in a statement Saturday that the abuse was "akin to a level of torture we hope our military personnel would never encounter."
Residents in the South Los Angeles neighborhood where the boy lived said Saturday that they were shocked to hear of the child's treatment and disgusted by the abuse allegations against the mother and girlfriend.
"I never knew a parent could do something like this. It was just a shock," said Mary Williams, 68, who lives in an apartment complex adjacent to where neighbors said Brown and Matthews live in the 11000 block of Figueroa Street.
Williams' 9-year-old grandson saw the boy often, and occasionally the two played together.
"How could you just do this and run off and leave him?" she said. "I hurt for that baby."
(AND YOU THOUGHT *YOU* HAD A SHITTY CHILDHOOD!)
Wowsers.
1. Sorry, I had you confused with another P.N. That's the wild success of this blog, comments from multiple P.N.'s
2. My sister agrees with me. The baggage can't be so bad: I have never been arrested, no DUI's, no suicide attempts, I'm ok. But thanks.
3. Actually, I was on the attorney panel at the Children's Court of LA County for two years representing people like this, so yes, I get it. I'm very lucky. There's a strange sense of sureal wonder to having a 12 year old boy explain to you why it is not right to hold a boy down and fuck him in the ass, a quote.
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