I Wish I Knew How to Make Friends

 

I feel like a kid on stage who forgot his lines in the school play.
The spotlight burning at my eyes.
The dead sound of someone off stage clearing their throat
Waving their hands in a motion that speaks, “C’mon dumbass…”

See, I know how I fucked up.
I fucked up by being born.
I fucked up being born into a poor white family next to the Stockyards.
Slaughterhouses everywhere – what was I thinking? I could have picked anywhere but here.
I would know how to make friends if I was smart enough to have been born somewhere else.

It’s kinda funny, I’m still here.
It’s kinda funny, I guess.
It’s not funny at all.
The blood still pools.
The shit still squirts from the sides of aluminum trailers
Hauling cattle to their deaths.

Like cattle being herded to their deaths.
The first time I saw fear, true fear was in the eyes of a cow.
A cow with a 45 stuck to its head.
It didn’t really change the look in its eyes.
Not really.

I guess.
I guess I expected something drastic to happen.
Besides the bullet burning through the side of this cow’s head.
See, I never learned what it meant to see the pain in someone’s eyes.
I never differentiated between life and alive.
I just wanted to be its friend.

Do you suppose that the cow’s eyes burned
When the guy in the tall black boots and white hard hat
Fired a 45 bullet through its skull?
Did it feel like a kid on stage who forgot his lines?
I wonder if he let his mother down.
I wonder if he let his Mother down.
I wish sometimes I was cow.

Cows can make friends.
How come I can’t make friends?
How come I can only make acquaintances?
I can only read their…
Hello Mr. Jones.
Hello, Mrs. Jones.

I can only feel attachment to people who have…
Or are…
Fucked up.
Like a cow about to be shot in the head.
Or fucked up like they have killed themselves with dope.
Fucked up so bad that they are just these shells
Walking around looking for copper to steal
Or someone to trick, or just trick off.

If only I had been smart enough to have born somewhere else.
Somewhere else I could have learned to make friends.
Some fucking where else.
But where else?
I could have chosen to be born…
Somewhere else.

Maybe I should have been someone else.
Like Jefferson.
Or maybe down in the South, in a mansion on a plantation.
No, out in a shitty little shack in a town called Dyess.
Everybody there has got to be friends.
They all loved picking cotton.
I bet picking cotton is a great way to make friends.
I could talk about hunger and the blisters on my hands, maybe even show off my new clothes to       my friends!

Oh, to have friends.

But I don’t know how to pick cotton.
Maybe I should have been born in the suburbs
Like Chad.
Chad knows how to make friends.
I bet Chad and all his friends make plans to go to the mall and see who can spend the most on a       tee-shirt.

But, I don’t know how to one-up with a tee-shirt.
Maybe I should have thought about being born in the ghetto.
Or the Ghetto.
Not the ones here in the US, where people are corralled as cattle, packed in as tight as they can be, like lunch meat, but one of those other Ghettos in Warsaw.
They were real famous in 45.
They knew how to make friends there.
They were always so close, they must have all been great friends.
I could make friends.
If only I was smarter.
Why did I choose to be born into a poor white family next to the Stockyards?
Maybe someday I will learn to make friends too.
But I don’t know how.