Mule's Blues (3rd Rain Song) Poem by Brandon Thomas DiSabatino

listen: george mule was an assistant fry cook
at a fried chicken restaurant for 30 years.
he thought he'd retire to an afterlife of
lawn chairs, pension, benefits,
even if he never knew what benefits were.
he never read the papers.
"too bad for george mule, " he'd say.
but he was the best assistant fry cook i'd
met,
/n he made me into the assistant fry cook i
am today.
i told him that.
you meet a lot of them here, /n george mule
was the jesus christ of assistant fry cooks.
ask any of the girls at the wild blue inn.
talk to the people in assisted living.

he'd dreamed of being a singer in a casino
or a math teacher.
maybe living somewhere w/ better weather.
maybe no one can love what they do.

i didn't dream of being an assistant fry cook as
a child.
i'd dreamed of being 6ft 7
w/ a house on the moon.later,
i wanted to be rich.
george told me, "i'd burn myself alive
to get out of here alive.do me a favor,
let me know when it rains."

i was drinking a domestic brand,
peeling the labels from the bottles,
making airplanes from the paper scraps,
when i saw the smoke signals go up over the
highway.
ol' george mule had barricaded the doors of his
house,
danced a kerosene arc over the floorboards /n
curtains /n set a fire inside.
he turned the porch light off.

it went up
like the 4th of july
/n left his ashes smeared like the petals
of albino roses
over the carhoods /n windows on the poor side
of town.
i was shocked.
i didn't know there was a poor side of town.
it all looks like the same side of the war
when you see it from here.

now one of the other assistant fry cooks said
it should rain,
wash what was left of george mule from the
sidewalks /n fences.
but 500 years
/n another nail in the cross
what's the difference anymore
if it rains.