Grandpa fled his home
Soaked in hate and blood
He came and caught a married woman
He adopted her sons.
Homeland visions stained his head
Besides, it was a different time.
He beat those sons damn senseless
He would not let them leave.
By the time I cane to know him
And he paid me for my sloppy paints
He’d found himself ol’ Jesus Christ
Reformed himself right good.
At least that god had done for him
What it never could for me.
But though I remember that man fondly
My father remembers that other him
The him I’d never seen.
*written in the margins of From the Mind of Sandie Kae
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