Paddy

his name was pat.
the spectre of his history never did catch up to him.

fishing knives
and shallow graves
were all he gave the world.

graves so far into
the growth of hickory forest,
where we played as kids,
that the busting, dogs lost their way.

in his twisted branch
he carried a cross that
crucified the neighbor's cat
to the door.

he had relations with dogs
of all breeds,
who he wrestled with
in his own howling yard of pain.

he killed a retarded guy once
'cause he gave him 20$ to buy beer
and he returned with 20$ worth of bubble gum.

pat took him fishing
the boat nearly tipped over
as his bloody, body fell into the murky waters 
of Turtle Lake to the silty bottom
some 20 feet bellow.

all the schools could do was kick him out
in the wound of a deep winter.
pat was 12 years old, facing the freeze of a glove-less cold, slowly making his way home.

and just look at the trouble he became?
5 brutal murders in the gentle, spring of one year.
armed robbery wherein
he foolishly dropped his wallet and
assault on just about everyone he could bully.

pat got caught hiding in his mom's basement
on a blustery fall day-
police tape blowing all around the home like so many serious kites,
open doors and cops kneeling with guns pointed
and a S.W.A.T. team with ready riffles by their side
who brought him in, cuffed, kicking, rolling and biting.

all they did
was put him in an
orange suit and push him into
a rusty-sink, two cot, cell.

pat got 5 consecutive
life sentences
and the death penalty twice.
the whole town was puzzled
by that one? the newspaper read,
"pat given death penalty, again"!

last we understood you could only kill a
man one time.
but i guess the court system felt differently
about that subject?

they never did get to kill him twice.
the lame-duck, governor issued
a stay of execution.
but that didn't offer pat
a reprieve from
his cellmate who cut him
in quarters with a shank
in the torch of
a sweaty, summer afternoon.
pat was 20 years old.

pat's soul turned
like a dust storm
across the lifer's
pacing square,
that he would trench-
no longer.

he lies in a prison cemetery
with all the rest of the guys.
there is not a single woman there.
just like when he was behind the dreaming bars of a life sentence on a midnight lock-down.
pat is just a cruel digit of a chisel
on the warden's hill.

i guess that even in death
not a whole lot changes?
the spectre of a man's history never
finds him when he is only twenty.
it takes an older man to really
understand all the terrible things he's done.