Used Cars

When you’re poor

You gotta decide

Where to put

Your shame

I put mine

In the car we drove

I could live with

Bad clothes

Tattered rags

Hand-me-downs

Nobody I knew had clothes

That were all that nice

But a few of my friends
Had dads

Who spent all their money

On a nice car

Because with a nice car

You can pretend

Everything else

Is going fine

A car and a house

Are what people see

Nobody’s house

Was any better

Than anybody else’s

But when we would

Drive down the street

In that shabby piece of junk

My dad bartered for

With the guy at the used car lot

I felt like we were airing

Our dirtiest laundry

To all our neighbors

My father would bark at me

To stop looking so sad

That families who spent their money

On a car were fools

Even nice families

Even the ones with money

A car is a bad investment

That’s what he would say

As our engine

Got louder and louder
But never louder than it was

On the first day of school

When he’d drop me off

And all the kids

Would point at me

And crack jokes

My dad took the money

He could have been spending

On a nicer car

And put it in a savings account

That got wiped out

When he lost his job

Halfway through

My junior year

He thought he was going to

Send us to college

On that money

My dad had a lot of plans

That never panned out

Hard to blame him for that

But not impossible

He moved in with me last year

When the nursing home called

Because his money ran out

That’s my whole relationship

To money

Watching it run away

From me

From my dad

From my whole damn family

Now he lives in my basement

And comes up once a night

To watch tv with me

And ask how I am

I tell him I’m okay

And he believes me

Because optimism

Is still better-looking

Than reality

I drive a nice car now though

Worked my ass off

To get it

And keep it

In some kind

Of decent shape

I wear the same jeans

Every day

And I only own

One pair of shoes

I need a new boiler

And new pipes

And I need to see a doctor

About this cough

That won’t go away

But fuck if I’m not driving

A brand new car

You gotta put your shame

Somewhere

I figured a new car

Was as good a place

As any