The Day After Poem by James McLain

Whispering they leaves the branch
it bends from the roaring wind
of the banshee.
And so have you with my sister
made good your threats.
Sister you have not even read
the mind and heart of your daughters
nine poems and your daughter
knows now the truth of what evil is
not meant but good instead it is.
You threaten me with things you help to
bring about.
Yes I worry over mine, That mother is an
alcoholic and hence by mental defect
is not guilty of that which you have done.
Being forwarned about enabling that of which
once was my family.
You choose instead to harm that which you could
either not understand of could not have.
By my youthful actions of folly and theft
pre·med·i·tat·ed accountability they had
and yet perhaps a better man I am,
perhaps naught, 'my dear sister and ex other.
but those of whom of which I speak and see
the sun a burning flame a candle of passion.
I can but speak for the child the harmful actions
some adults have caused,
and it is not their curtain you hide behind, because
it once was easier to marry ten Arabs
and black mail them
with thier freedom and desire to remain here
than be uselessly killed over there.
I can but forgive both your two hearts.
And sofly so soft perhaps you can't hear it.
Your first theft from me was thirty two months in prison
because I could not return what I took from them.
doing what you did with your bi polor friends
in front of my child because her mother was as well
and you would not defend your own child against
the demon that dwelled within the home of your child
and it called crack,
you must forgive your self for that which you have done
and
because again you have choosen that over this, they know.

She is my only neice the other dead at twenty one
trying to run from that which you were and are
you not fearful that their is a God at all just in case
hedge your bets, as you have trimmed and cut the rose.
And thus to defend her from that which
is not in reality a maker of drama queens.
and Yes I will,
she is but the ten year old child you hide behind.
a writer of poems trapped in a house,
hello and I did what because, because of what you
would not do I will do for you again.

So we go to court next week to seek out your vanity
and weather
or naught I can beheld accountable for that which is
your vision of what consistutes truth.
I will always have night mares about what my daughter
saw with you and my other and drinking
while your mother kept yours for you.

And girls just want to have fun
when only ten
but at fifty one
I would think that a reasonable inference
would be on the child
that every one else takes care of
many days past and many too come
The Day after, 'You did what You, did.





18 June 2010