Engine trouble

The man was not just skinny but scraggly.

His mother kept telling him to get a job. He still listened to his mother.

He worked. He worked in an auto-shop learning lubes and fine-tuning-

Until they stopped making them

like they used to.

His father used to 

drink alcohol like a liquor store sprinter. Naturally, he got thirsty too, and drank

and stank the same as his father, his mother would say every day.

Grease or oil, bitter battery acid or brake fluid and gin, 

and all over again, the evolved monkey man

with the sooty stained hands that exclude him from white paper work, shows silver

linings along his brow.

Every now and then he picks up a brush, a ladder, a little girl and moves just a stroke away

from happiness in his days. His mother said she prays for him.

He should have picked up a shovel or an ice pick, manners or a real lady,

but is too weak to make them work

for him.

He falls into a five year hole. 

He comes out in smooth pieces, 

none fit tight and his well-being wont hold water, slipping on surfaces,

He is sees light

And knows he is being saved for another life, another 

day to die, his mother said ladies first when he listened.

The old lady in a broken down car, pulled over on the roadside waves for help, 

it is all white and frozen, steam surrounds her.

The mechanic stops

himself for a moment 

before moving on, 

simply too skinny to spare anything-

a white canvas, waiting for him to return 

the favor.



Painting by Jacob Jordaens, The Satyr and the peasants (1620) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.