New Sestina

It's no secret that I'm a sympathetic soul. It's no secret that I troll white-power message boards and try to piece together the tiny (hate-filled) dramas of their lives. It doesn't make me feel better about being hated, but it helps me love the them, the haters, in a kind of patronizing way that the white nationalists would probably prefer not to know about. They are lost, like most of the rest of us, and grasping.

Also, they're good for a sestina.

I knew a man who looked at his life,
and didn’t like the crummy future in front of him.
18-years-old and already working for his dad.
His dad was a stern man,
and the work was hard carny work
that wore the body out young.

An 18-year-old is young,
but old enough to want more from life--
old enough to want good work.
He knew the air force would be good to him
and that it would make him a man,
a better one than his dad.

And so, without a word to his dad,
who was no longer young,
the boy went and became a man,
and learned skills that would take him far in life.
Or at least far from home--which was fine with him.
After all, aircraft repair is good work.

And that’s the only way it was going to work,
the only thing that could keep him from becoming his dad,
and save himself from that crummy future he saw ahead of him.
The air force doesn’t care if you’re young,
or where you come from in life.
All they need is a man.

And what they got was a man:
a man who could do all kinds of work,
and who was ready to give his life,
(anything to escape his dad)
a man who wasn’t too young.
What they got was him.

I don’t often think about him,
as a boy or as a man.
I only remember him as young,
dirt-poor, but willing, happy to work,
and his poor old dad,
who worked as a carny for the rest of his life.

My friend's young brothers didn’t follow him
they got work, sometimes, but it wasn’t fit for a man
But that’s life, and who wants to be their dad?