Failing To Play Nice

he says "daddy loves me some

but momma loves me all"

sometimes it takes him days

to act his usual way

when he's back at her place

he says "can we move to Chicago?

I promise I won't cry"

she says he'll miss his dad

but he says he won't be sad

a blank expression on his face

and how could she have seen this

when she was twenty one

nobody said a word

and even if she'd heard

no matter what they'd said

she'd have kept and made his bed

for as long as she could stand

'cuz it wasn't in her hands

and three is twice the price

for failing to play nice

and back in 1980

was the story just the same

when they sat me on the stairs

and asked me if I cared

that my dad was soon to go

my brother can't remember

how he would get confused

about why we'd go to spend

every first and third weekend

with a man he didn't know

and then came the succession

of more unwanted men

and I made it my task

to tear away their masks

'cuz the way they'd dupe my mom

with money and aplomb

I just wish I'd been a man

but I had such little hands

and still I played the price

for failing to play nice