Pat

Pat

They think you’re Satan’s child,
they’ve banned you from our homes,
they’ve called you everything
from home wrecker to child molester.

When lives end up like shit,
It’s usually your fault.
As if man could never
fuck his own life up.

They’ve forced you into seclusion—
an outcast on the run—
while siblings of yours are mainstays
in aspirational lifestyles.

One brother is cool, another’s a stud,
your sister hobnobs with plastic uptown snobs.
Yet every one of us knows
it’s they who killed the Marlb’ro man.

You calm me when I’m tense,
you muffle the worldly noise,
you open wide my jaded eyes
to all that's on the lighter side.

With every breath, I feel a tickle.
The more I have of you, the funnier things get,
until my chest is flushed of what’s impure,
with one hell of an unguarded laugh!

It’s true, someday you’ll be the death of me.
But so will all that man conceived.
I’d rather give myself an O.D.
of what they say is the best of medicines.

And if, from my grave I fail to narrate
some chapters you’ve cut from my memory,
at least the movie my fellow souls will see
tells a choppy but happy story.

What sense, therefore, has the hypocrisy
of keeping you away from me—
if the point of life is to be happy,
and that’s exactly what you teach me?