Child's Variations Poem by RIC BASTASA

i

what they need is just
a box of chocolates
the cheapest that you
can buy from that
flea market

if you give them money
their father will spend it
on cigarettes and bet on
a cock derby this coming
Sunday

ii

the one with a blue shirt
wants to play killing with guns
the other one will play dead
and the last one will, by
statistical probability, like
a barbie doll

iii

next month their mother will
again be pregnant
and then their father will
be laid off from work

iv

The President of this country
will build them a house for free,
a lot too where the house shall stand
He will also give money for them
to cross the bridge of poverty
and this three will not go to school
and the mother will have another
pregnancy and the father will have
no plan of finding work

they can thrive on charity,
they will live on dole-outs
and they will vote without
thinking come election time

and the same political dynasty shall win
all over again

v

it will be the same mess
the same hopeless case

vi

tomorrow a writer will change his
point of view
he will be cursed for his pessimism

and these kids who will grow to become
lazy bones
will have wives who like to sleep and make
more children

whose picture will again be taken
by another man who will say that the
writer died at an early age and
was proven wrong by the
pages of history.

vii

fine. That is the ending of this
fiction.

Which i know, you never liked