"A Holiday Story"

The son of a Broken Man
Is a Broken Man
That Woman cooked each day
Her ruddy red face burned by the fire and the hand
Of That Man, drunk in the armchair, hung unconsciously by midafternoon
And That Girl never got in home by three
Whoring in beds with a needle in her arm
And that boy sat beneath a dying tree
that couldn't even hold the weight
Of Bud Light cans
Drooping melancholily over a newspaper-wrapped box
that boy who listened to the out-of-breath woman
Try to say a few words of salvation over his head
At the fold-out table
That lodged itself in the middle of the trailer
For special occasions
that boy who felt the love of his father
Through mingled slips of hands and slips of tongue
that boy who watched the trail of his sister
Slip from her pillow on the sofa
To That Neighbor
To That Dealer
And to That Jail
that boy, he grew up into another man
One who sat alone in front of a tree
That didn't droop under any weight at all
For it sat bare
Its pine didnt fall onto any wrapped box
For it wasn't there
That man didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't sleep
That man had a life outside of stifling Alabama air
That man couldn't not show the side
That his father showed him
This new man sat alone in blinking silent lights
With reruns on basic cable
Not seeing the glistening purity of the white outside
And the New York celebration of this eve
But seeing the Alabama trailer
And so many other trailers and homes
That burned from the inside out
That burned with no fire of redemption
This, our man, he spends Christmas here
In an empty apartment
With an empty life
With an empty soul
For the son of a Broken Man
Is a Broken Man.