Assignment (Poem)

Help me.

I'm trying to turn language into tired hands at the factory
between 5pm and sin o'clock.
I wanted to show you how hungry a child gets
when mom can't miss a day of work
unless she shares her body with the shift leader. 

Help me turn a stanza
into someone's favorite restaurant
where a kid kissed them for the first time
at their birthday party.
I want to show you how to make them smile 
whenever they bump into each other's situation
for the next twenty years. 

Help me find rhyming words
to form an alliance between mom
and only son.
I want to show you that Jesus' lineage through Mary
wasn't a mistake, but God showing off at the pitcher's mound,
throwing left and right handed
because He never misses.

Help me paraphrase the truth
of us willing to pay thousands of dollars
for something we can have and hide...
or hide and have 
like chocolate cake behind the kitchen
or chocolate love behind the barn
where the master grabs a dark mother
he won't set free in a million dreams.

Help me personify sex, death and fetishes
as someone we rather see after midnight,
but never before church.
I want to show how we drink the poison
just as long as we make it ourselves
because that's how controlling we can be.

Help--
wait, I think I'm finished.

Now, help me prove none of this is real. 

-Calvin W. Pennywell Jr. (2022)