Nurture

My parents never explained anything to me.
When they took me to see Santa, I thought he was the devil.
I refused his candy cane and begged for mercy.
In church, I thought I was being punished.
I was very still sitting in the corner with my dunce hat on.
I would salute the mailman and march behind him
With my bb gun all the way to the front.
I was confined to a nut house for a spell.
I waited in my dressing room for my cue.
I had a joke prepared: a priest, a minister, and a mechanic
Walk into a sewage treatment plant.
What stinks was the punch line.
But I only saw the host once checking in,
And once leaving, and he was two different men!
I’ve heard the world is temporal,
The sky an ethereal and violent prison full of thieves.
I once sat under a tree thinking about nothing at all.
Now I live at the corner of Bedlam and Squalor.
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me
Than a frontal lobotomy.