Greasy Joe.

A sort of prose/ poem.

Greasy Joe.
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Kids can be cruel; it's a fact of life.
But we never meant it
Not to go so far
Not to string you up
Like the chickens.

Greasy Joe, we called you that
Two kids pampered by love and
Owning too much.
What would you know of that?

It was the bulk, you see, that and the way
Your hands hung down like a great baboon
When the whistle blew for a break or a meal.
You'd stand so still with the shift ended and
Then you'd wake slowly, like our dad coming
Out of a dreamlike state. We didn't know then
You were never like him, drunk half the day.

That silly hat they made you wear, as if it could
Ever hide your greasy hair and the sweat that
Stained in big pools under your armpits, the white
Overall fading to grey and flecks of blood and feathers
Sticking to you. We made you an ogre, a thing of decay
Lumbering around with a hatchet in your meaty arms
Scared you'd chop off our heads or make us into pies.

We spied on you when you sat alone, eating doorstep
Sandwiches and drinking water while we thought of
The night when you'd come out and drink pure blood.
We never saw you with anyone even the men ignored you
On Friday nights when they supped their ale and coaxed
Women into bed. You'd lumber home, a giant going to
His castle where you'd grind the bones of men for bread.

It was always the chickens you see. The way you hooked
Them through the neck and hung them up for plucking. A
Production line every day the same. It must have touched you
Made you a monster although the other men laughed and joked
You stayed silent and that fed our fear, for nobody could fail to
Make a joke of it unless they were rotten to the core and carried
On tearing the flesh until they laughed or barfed their food.

We had the run of the factory every day when school was out,
Daddy pickled in whiskey and gin laid his head on the desk and
We run wild in the places where none should see the giblets and
The spare pieces turned into burgers for the laughing kids. We saw
The chickens trussed for markets and the pieces boned for another
Line, packaged into quarters for the supermarkets to sell at high prices
While you sweated away, silent with no thoughts to share.

'Best bloody worker I ever had,' daddy said as he counted out the
Blood money owed to you. We run and hid, afraid of his drunken temper,
As he lashed out at you. We followed you home, back to the mean streets and
The stench of corrupted flesh, now we knew how you carried on, your mother dying
In her own home, while the rabbits hunched in their cages and the cats and dogs
Tripped you up. But you never swore and cradled them in your butcher's arms as
She laid dying and gasping her last breath like the chickens you hung every day.

'Daddy, please daddy,' we begged and prayed, take Joe back for the rabbits, the cats
And the dogs.' But he hung his head in shame and then we knew what daddy had done.
Changed you to fit his needs and all the while he understood what he did to you.
Money, and more, that's all that mattered, he tore your heart in two.

Greasy Joe, it's no shame to be called that name,
You sweated for every living thing and now you've
Hung your last chicken, for now we'll eat no meat again
Nor call our father by his name.
¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦¦.