Happy as I Am

Trailer parks, projects, Circle K parking lots,
And trash-ridden vacant places,
And coldly illuminated side streets with front porches
Peeling their rented paint. He's sullen. She's sereaming. Two fat babies

Sit dazed on a couch. There's maybe a knife or a gun, and blood,
A few drops already scabbing on her tace or pooled dry
On the sidewalk, mapping a wound, and it's always afterwards,
Ten minutes later, a half hour.
Every night I watch the show Cops
After dinner. I'm by myself becauPr?views my wife, the voyeurism
Of it, the high-pitched, tension emergency sounds,
And my son, a good boy who by now has fallen far from the tree,
Hates the unpredictability, the chaos, and blood, especially the blood,
He says, but he loves the verbal violence of rap music, so who knows

How far he's fallen,
and I love the opening rap song, Bad Boys,
Because thats what I thought I always was, what my father called me
As a boy, the neighbors, too, the relatives, the principal of the junior high

Who told my father on the phone, You don't have to wory about
Your son going to college, he's going to jail, and hung up.

Why do you watch that stuf? my wife asks from the kitchen.
Because I feel I sort of know these people, from childhood--
The perps, the cops, the victims--
...