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Bob Learns His Nephew, Part I

Bob Robinson had been born in the ghetto,
and his childhood was not a nice thing,
single mother, just a teenager herself,
in a neighborhood known for gang-banging.

But Bob was a truly tenacious soul,
he got his first job and didn’t look back,
determined he’d never let himself become
a welfare case stuck addicted to crack.

Though he never had culinary schooling,
he learned much at the restaurants he worked,
until, at thirty, he opened his own,
his own place, his own menu, his own turf.

He had a great spot right by the highway
near a suburb that housed much big tech,
he just called it ‘Bob’s,’ and soon was known
for serving up the town’s finest Tex-mex.

Bob usually liked to be the bartender,
he met all sorts of near people that way,
life went smoothly, at least it did at first,
until his nephew was sent out to stay.

Jamal was the first of the family
to receive an offer to go to school,
a local four-year gave a scholarship,
since Jamal was anything but a fool.

Now Jamal did not want to wait tables,
but Bob fed him, since he was family,
and not long after he started classes
he began to behave aggressively.

Began to say folks were out to get him,
that the ‘system’ was rigged to his loss,
then pale-skin folks were all ‘keeping him down,’
would never let folk like him be the boss.

Now all this seemed quite bizarre to Bob,
he himself had seventeen employees,
but Jamal kept saying he was ‘oppressed,’
that he would fight as a minority.

For the first year Jamal was quite active,
never missed a rally of protest march,
but then when he got himself arrested
Bob worried the his path soon would get dark.

When he got off with community service
it seemed just to invigorate Jamal’s rage,
he started calling for ‘reparations’
for the actions of a dead and gone age.

He started spewing out Socialist tripe,
said private property only oppressed,
that all who took part in it were ‘slave-drivers,’
it all left Bob feeling more and more vexed.

Then when Jamal jabbed a finger at him,
and cussed out his fiancé for being pale,
Bob threatened to cut him off for his crap,
but his threats seemed to be of no avail...

CONCLUDES IN PART II.

Copyright © David Welch | Year Posted 2019

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