Someone has to love them.
Why must it always be me?
Why do I love the ones
With all the ticks and fleas?

I’ll take the ramblers and drunkards,
The tired, the sick, the lonely.
One like a malnourished street dog,
All surly and bony.

The broken, the beaten
The hated and cursed.
Downtrodden, dishonest,
The god awful worst.

The wasted and the liar,
Abandoned, bent, and broke.
Boring, boorish, and crude.
Not funny, but a joke.

Give me the malevolent,
The vain repeat offender.
He’ll brag that he is damaged.
I’ll say that I’m his mender.

I’m a mother and a nurse.
Projects are my field.
A latter day Nightengale.
But no one ever gets healed.

Accused, tried, and sentenced.
Packed up, and kicked out.
Cheap, mean and ugly.
That’s my type. There’s no doubt.

Let the next lady get
The one who’s really changed.
The one with ample character,
And not a trace of rage.

Give me your used up,
Guilty, confessed, convicted,
Abandoned, hopeless, feral,
rude, selfish, and evicted.

The worse they are,
The better they seem.
I love the ones
You kill in your dreams.

One has got to be hopeful.
Let’s just agree I’m that.
Pardon, I see a handsome drunk
Wearing a lampshade for a hat.

 

*Thanks to my late mother in law, Cynthia, who loved a good joke about the drunk in the corner wearing a lampshade for a hat. And thanks to my love for being none of these things.