Boy in the body of a Man

He's forgotten his future already.
The one soaked in rum
and rolled in dreams
waking up next to possibilities and potential,
the stepchildren of suburbia.
But I think he left them
back with his job
back with his future.
however amputated it may be
(sometimes vodka's sharper than
any scalpel could ever hope to be)
how did he get here?
or there or there
it makes no difference
they're all his home now
or rather his lack there of.

you see he's got a real nice place.
Five gazebos, two benches
and a fountain in the middle.
But the real selling point
was the location,
right in the middle
of downtown suburban Wheaton,
mind you it was a park.
and he could be "evicted"
at any time
by a loathingly "concerned" soccer mom
who's trying to clean up the city
while her kids do drugs
in her perfect Ikea basement.

This wasn't the plan,
but life gets in the way
bills get in the way
parents get in the way.
Underneath the stench of alcohol
and broken promises
there is a nine year old boy
looking for his mom
or rather finding her.
Needle full of his own future
stuck in her arm
telling him to
"come sit by Mamma"
a nine year old shouldn't know
the inner workings of a crack house
so intimately
but it's hard not to
when you were raised in one.

His chances for success
went right up his arm
along with half the poppies in Asia.
"Get a job"
is his forced mantra.
Beaten into his head
by strangers since he was fifteen.
Sorry, but the job market
for 37 year old
reformed heroin junkies
living in parks
is a lot slimmer than one might expect.

So he lets his organs stew
in a nice broth of
ripple, mad dog and hindsight.
Slowly flooding the
perfectly appointed Ikea basement
he's dreamt of since he was
nine years old.