TW: Child abuse, domestic violence

“If you don’t say what you want, what’s the sense of writing?” – Jack Kerouac
“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” – Henry David Thoreau

My mom was the third youngest of nine children – seven girls and two boys. Fourteen years separates the oldest from the youngest. All of her siblings were married at least once, and four of her sisters gave birth to sixteen children over the course of approximately twenty years, with one uncle contributing two children of his own. The result of this mathematical clusterfuck is a confounding multi-generational group of aunts, uncles, and first cousins (plus a bunch of once-removeds). I’m the second-youngest of the first cousins, and my oldest first cousin is nearing seventy. Her oldest daughter is less than one year younger than me, which is perilously close to fifty. It’s all very confusing, and the only reason I’m sharing this information is to provide you with some background with regard to the poem I’m gonna share shortly.

Here’s some more poem-related context : my mom was raised in a very backward-thinking fundamentalist church in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. When I say “backward-thinking,” I mean that the women aren’t allowed to speak for themselves unless their husband¹ says they can. When I say “fundamentalist church,” I mean that they think the creation story is a factual account of a literal event, and it doesn’t even occur to them to wonder what “King James Version” might actually mean. When I say “tiny town,” I mean that there are still fewer than seven hundred people living in the just under four-and-a-half square mile “unincorporated community” and “census-designated place.” And when I say “in the middle of nowhere,” I mean that it takes twenty minutes to drive to the downtown square of the nearest city-by-definition, and driving to the closest bigger city will set you back an hour,² and who wants to drive for an hour just to end up in Indianapolis?

I thank every god anyone ever thought up that Mom left the church when she was pregnant with me, but since she didn’t sever ties with any of her family, and since my older sister continued to attend that church, I was still raised very church-adjacent.³ I know some things about that church, and nearly all of those things are not good. Here’s one of the things I know about that church, by way of example: way back when I was a baby, one of my aunts filed for divorce because her husband was a physically and verbally abusive piece of shit, and the church’s response was to ask her to leave, because divorce is only okay in cases of infidelity. You’ll learn a little bit about one of the other not-good things shortly, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you weren’t surprised to learn it.

This is a “new and improved” version of a poem I posted on my Substack back in October⁴, and so far it’s the only thing I’ve posted there exclusively, as everything else thither has also been posted hither. I was afraid that someone in my family would see it, since this blog gets way more views than my Substack, but today I realized I truly don’t give a shit if anyone in my family sees it. Only like five of them even talk to me anymore, anyway. I suppose that number might decrease after this, which frankly would make me a sad, but fuck it. Let me just say this: if you have reason to believe you know who I’m talking about, you are correct. Fuck both of those sacks of shit and that bullshit church.

Anyway, after I decided to publish it here, I made some changes from the original published version, mostly stylistic. I prefer this version. It’s different, but it’s still kinda the same poem, like how the two versions of “Don’t Cry” are different, but they’re still the same song. I’m not saying this is as good as “Don’t Cry,” and it’s actually more different from the original version than the two versions of “Don’t Cry” are from each other, but I will say I can think of at least one Guns N’ Roses song that it’s definitely better than. See if you can guess which one I’m thinking of!⁵

Here’s the original version, if you wanna compare for some reason. I’m gonna stop now. Thanks for reading.

I Got These Two Sack of Shit Uncles

I got these two
Sack of shit uncles
Both by marriage
Both molested children
In their own family

Nieces
Stepsons
Sisters-in-law
Etcetera

It’s a big family
I’m sure there are
Plenty more
Who never
Spoke up

Neither of those
Sacks of shit
Ever faced
Any consequences

They both asked
The Church
For Forgiveness and
The Church
Forgave them and
Everyone went
About their business
Like there weren’t two
Sack of shit
Child predators
Among them

One of those
Sacks of shit is
Four years dead and
People say that
He was a Good Man
But they either
Don’t know
Or they
Don’t care
About what he did
To my mom and
My cousins and
My aunts and
Probably more and
Either way
They are all mistaken
He was not a Good Man

There are Good Men
And there child molesters
And never the twain shall meet

My sister believes
That sack of shit
Is in Heaven

With Jesus
And Grandma

Because he told
The Church
He was sorry

My sister believes
That our mother
And our sister
Are suffering in Hell
Because they both
Stopped attending
That fucked-up church
Of their own volition
And Died in Sin

But I tell you what

If either of those
Sacks of shit
Will ever be in heaven
I’d rather spend eternity
In Indianapolis

1. Or their father, if they aren’t old enough to marry off yet. ↩︎
2. In days of yore, it could easily take ninety minutes to get to Indianapolis if you hit the lights wrong. Now we’ve got an interstate runnin through our front yard, and we think we’ve got it so good. ↩︎
3. This church adjacency also caused me to be terrified of Slayer, King Diamond, and all kinds of other cool shit for way too long. ↩︎
4. I wrote it on my mom’s birthday. I know she would appreciate it. I also know she would never understand why I had to write it. ↩︎
5. It’s “My World” from Use Your Illusion II (1991). ↩︎