These Four Walls

I've never done good thingsI've never done bad things
I never did anything out of the blue
Want an axe to break the ice
Want to come down right now

It all comes down to Cheerios and those four walls. He was awake. He would rub his fingers over the mesh of his port-a-crib. Faster and faster, he would rub until his fingers burned from the friction and his senses ran into overdrive. He would hesitate for a moment and let those feelings pass, then rub again, over and over and over. If he stopped rubbing everything would stop. There was nobody to talk to him. There was nothing in the crib except a soiled blanket. There used to be a yellow and pink stuffed bear as well. Like the ones won at a carnival. But he had thrown that out days ago and nobody had placed it back in the crib with him. The silence was too much of a void so he would rub and rub and rub. The mesh wove patterns of light as his fingers raced back and forth. Millions of rays played a frantic game of light and shadow. Sometimes he would get lost in them. He could get so involved that he would just stare at the little holes. Those were the best times. It was like he wasn’t even there.

A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that

Sometimes he would scream. There was delicious times where he found his voice. He would sound loud and louder. The air would expel from his lungs. His muscles would tense with the joy of it all. It wasn’t for any sort of purpose. Just to sound was enough. The volume was ecstasy in his ears. He could push everything else away with the sound. He would close his eyes tight and a torrent of white and black spots would dance in the darkness behind his eyes. The sound would sometimes bring something else. Something beautiful or painful. It was only a matter of time. It all comes down to Cheerios and those four walls.


I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa coming for you
I'm the space invader, I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you
Keep your mouth shut, you're squawking like a big monkey bird
And I'm busting up my brains for the words

Sometimes she would come. Staggering with eyes closed from light and pain. Heavy hands would land on the frayed edges of his port-a-crib. She would regard him and he her. If only he could stop screaming for a moment. But he found that he could not. He could just scream and scream. Sometimes she would tell him to shut the fuck up. Sometimes she would hit him. It made no difference. The screams would come from somewhere inside of him. They were as regular as breathing and as normal as his beating heart. There were the moments of silence. Sometimes a hit would come so hard that screaming was impossible from the incredible jar of the strike and the spots in his vision would become swirling stars and dazzling explosions of sharp pain. After, there was a tingling numbness as he sucked in air, Though not enough for another scream. Focus came back as often as it did not. When it did, she was gone. It all comes down to Cheerios and these four walls.


We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more

Sometimes when she came it was different. She would coo and pick him up. His body would tense against her touch. So much in his little body wanted to press into her. To feel her skin. To be close to her. There was something in her touch that repelled him as much as it drew him. He found himself fighting against her, pulling at her hair, biting her. Sometimes she would throw him back into the crib and be gone again. Sometimes she would place him on the ground on his back. She would take off his foul and dripping diaper, clean him and put on a new one. She would tell him that he smelled like shit. She would say he was disgusting. She would tell him she wished he was dead. He couldn’t look into her eyes. There was so much he didn’t like to see there. He would lay on the floor, let her clean him, avoid her eyes and concentrate on the touch. It all comes down to Cheerios and these four walls.

So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

Sometimes he would drop. Legs just didn’t work after awhile. He would lay very still and look toward the ceiling as it spun and spun and spun. She would lounge on the couch and pick her nose. Sometimes she would forget to take the needle out of her arm and it would bob with the motion of her hands. She stared and stared, smiling all the time, nothing behind her eyes. He would cry sometimes. The pain would make him cry. There was something missing. She would drift off the couch and move to the kitchen as if in a dream. She would get the yellow box and float back toward him. Then the rain would come. Small tan circles poured into the crib, bouncing off his face, arms and body. He would open his mouth and some would drop in. They crunched when he worked his jaw. Delicious. Salvation. He would crawl through his stained and foul crib and eat every one he found. Sometimes she would only drop in a little. The best times where when the yellow box would fall from her fingers completely and it would all be his. He would sleep after eating. When he awoke, he found his legs worked again and he could stand up.

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same


“I have to shit,” She said. “Oh, man I have to shit so bad. Where’s the fucking bathroom? I have to get to the fucking bathroom.” She stood up and wobbled grotesquely, bumping against the wall as she staggered to the bathroom. “Shut the fuck up,” The man would say. “You’re just coming unplugged from all that shit you do. It has to happen sometime.” The man laughed and laughed. The child rubbed my fingers over the mesh and watched her. “Go and get some more shit,” She said. “I think I will,” The man said. “I don’t want to be around when you take a super dump anyway.” He walked out of the house and closed the door. She pulled her pants down and slumped onto the toilet and shuddered. The child rubbed the mesh on the port-a-crib. The child tried to leave and get lost in the light, but it wouldn’t let him. He had to watch. He had to be there. “Oh, shit. Holy shit,” She said. She lifted her body off the toilet and it tensed as her body shoved forward. A baby dropped from her vagina, cradled in a wet weave of afterbirth. The tiny body thumped on the bathroom tile. She stood there looking down at the baby. The umbilical cord snaked into her. She pulled on it like it could be unplugged from her body. The tiny baby cried. So did she. All of a sudden the flickering light from the mesh caught The child’s eye and he was lost in the sparkling light. He could feel the heat from his fingers rubbing back and forth, faster and faster. It all comes down to Cheerios and these four walls.

Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth
You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your cigarette
The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget

All For Nothing

The phone rang in the middle of the night. The father swore and fumbled for his cell phone and glasses. The mother sat up in bed and rubbed her face.
"Who died?" The mother said.
"Someone better have died calling at this hour," The father said. He picked up the call.
"Hello?"
"Hi, I am so sorry to be calling this late. It's your adoptive worker through the county. I know you're not a foster home but we kind of have a situation here. Two boys, a baby and a one year old, just came to us and need placement. We are overrun with children at the moment and don't have enough foster placement options available. Would you be willing to take these two boys?"
The father turned to confer with the mother. Before he was finished with his first sentence she was out of bed and getting dressed. He loved her more for it.
They drove to the social services office. There they were handed two baby boys.
"We tried to clean them up a little," The social services worker said. The boys were filthy. Long unkempt hair snarled and matted the one-year-old's head. The baby skin was an unhealthy white. His body was lean and weak. The father turned him over in his arms and ran a finger over the flat back of the babies head. The hair was missing in a wide circle.
"I don't think they let him out of his bouncer much," The social worker said.
"That's putting it kindly," The father said, "What do we do now?"
"You take them home," The social worker said, "I will be calling you tomorrow to set up a home visit and go over your responsibilities for supervised visits with the biological family. Do you have car seats?"
The father and mother shook their heads no.
"The seats the children came here with are in pretty rough shape," The social worker said, "I can lend you some from our office, but you have to bring them back tomorrow. We don't have any more."
The father and mother took the children home.

Over the next several months the children's health improved. The hair grew in on the back of the babies head and it formed better to a proper shape. When the baby first entered the home his crying was soft and with disinterest. The father said it was because the baby didn't think anyone gave a shit. The mother told the father not to swear in front of the baby. Now the child squalled with fury. His screams sounded beautiful to the mother and father. The screams meant "I exist! I have worth!" The father said he liked the child better when he wouldn't cry. The mother scolded him.
The one-year-old began to babble instead of scream. He still panicked whenever he saw food and grabbed as much as he could get his hands on. In company, he went from lap to lap pointing and screeching for whatever the person was eating. The father said it was probably the only way the kid used to get any food was to beg it off whomever was eating. The mother agreed.

The children had their visits with the biological family. The mother and father could only watch as they fed the children soda, ice cream by the ton, candy and worst of all - apple juice.
"Please don't give him apple juice," The mother would say, "It hurts his stomach and give him a rash that bleeds. His skin is so fair."
The biological family gave him juice anyway.
The baby cried. The biological family called him fat and spoiled. They told him he was rotten.
The one-year-old would be so up from the visit that he would scream and scream in the car all the way home, through the evening and into the night. The baby would be so overwhelmed that he would just fall asleep until the visit was over.

The father and mother lost sleep. The children were never on a regular schedule. Visits were held during nap times. The children were handed back from day-long unsupervised visits with words of - "The kids didn't sleep all day. Only little cat naps." The children would scream through the night.

The Mother and Father prayed that the children would stay with them. They could make them a good home. They would be good parents to them. They wouldn't hurt them. They prayed for it every night.

It wasn't an easy way to live. The Mother and Father's marriage suffered from the emotional roller coaster their lives had become. Their finances strained. Their lives seemed not their own; run by court dates and supervised visitation.

Ten months passed, then twenty. The children grew up strong in the father's and mother's home. The court hearing for permanency placement arrived. The children's biological mother and father didn't follow the courts steps on how they would get their children back. The father and mother went to court looking for a miracle. Two miracles. They didn't get it.

"The children are to be reprimanded to the custody of the maternal grandmother," The judge said.
The father's heart broke. The mother's heart broke.
The boys were taken away by the social worker. The children were going back to the home they were taken away from. A trailer which already housed five people. The boys would make seven.
"Why did we care for them only to have them be taken back to where they were abused?" The father said.
The mother didn't answer.
"You know they are just going to hurt them again. What the fuck is the point to all this?" The father said.
The mother didn't answer. She started to cry.
"These boys were with us for twenty months," The father said, "That means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Especially with them being so young. We did nothing. A week of starving and slaps back in that fucking trailer will ruin twenty months of our love here. Fucking pointless!" The father shook with rage, then sat down by his wife and they both cried.

Years passed. At first the mother and father thought of those boys every day. After awhile those times where the children passed their minds stretched to weeks, then months. Now the mother and father were old and memories of the children came as sad, unexpected surprises. It reminded them that a person cannot forget anything about their lives, everything eventually churns to the surface sometimes.

The father died. He entered heaven, greeted friends and family long passed on. Every once and awhile the father would spend some time with Jesus.
"Hi," the father said, "I'm the guy that slapped you five on the way in. Bet that doesn't happen too often to you."
"More often than you think," Jesus said, "What do you want?"
"How are my sons?" The father asked.
"They are okay," Jesus said, "They are on Earth."

The mother died. She entered heaven, greeted friends and family long passed on. Every once and awhile the mother would spend some time with Jesus.
"Hi," the mother said, "I'm the wife of the guy who bothers you all the time."
"You long suffering woman," Jesus smiled, "What do you want?"
"How are my sons?" The mother asked.
"They are okay," Jesus said, "They are on Earth."

Time passed. The father wasn't sure how much, but it felt like a lot. He went and talked to Jesus.
"Hi," The father said.
"Hi," Jesus said.
"I feel like I've been here awhile," The father said.
"Make yourself comfortable," Jesus said.
"How are my sons?" The father asked.
Jesus frowned and looked at the father with heavy, sad eyes.
"Where are my sons?" The father said. "Where are they Jesus?"
Jesus began to speak but then stopped. The father stared hard at Jesus then, in fury, ran to where God was. The father came to the place. He looked at God and was so filled with awe, love and understanding that it took all his will power to tear himself away.
He found Jesus behind him.
"Nothing," The father wailed, "It was all for nothing."
 The father found out that even though Jesus wipes away every tear in heaven, it doesn't mean that we won't cry.