Straight Talk for High-Risk Children
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High Risk Children
By Reid Baer

My unipolar mother whistled past the graveyard
or more correctly groaned enviously with those
six foot under incapacitated to help herself
or her bi-polar manic-depressive husband

even with her Master’s degree in psychology
she couldn’t help herself or her progeny – especially me –
doubled over in chronic stomach pain
in 6th grade during class taken to the Mayo Clinic

where a battery of tests were performed on this young character
and in the end nothing appeared wrong (so they said)
except what was obviously wrong with me
and the MD handed over a roll of antacids

and bid me go and set myself free.
And there never was to be a psych referral for me.
So the day after graduating high school I ran away from home
and ran and ran toward the blue open sea

hopped freight trains up and down the left coast homeless
and numb but not yet quite perfectly free
while my older brother attempted suicide in the back yard
my younger sister married too young for lots of money

and the family baby brother lead a pious life enduring an interminable nagging wife.
And so later my neurosis was smart enough to assist me in finding a woman with similar genes she received from her depressed mother and pedophile father contributing to my bride’s passive-aggressive disposition and together we mixed the worst of both families

and joined in an inevitable Hail Mary pass through to the next generation
with our horribly disordered stuff
that I have indeed warned my three children about
and what they have to look forward to is now plain enough.



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