Name: One Sticker Kid
Duration: P00H02M44S
Description: The Haves meet the Have-nots. And their families.

One Sticker Kid

from Loudmouth: Page and Pub Poems by Michael Botur

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

$1 NZD or more
Buy the Full Digital Album

about

The Haves meet the Have-nots. And their families.

lyrics

One Sticker Kid

6.30 Sunday night we laminate my special little guy’s accolades, his trophy-trove (cosy, close). We get in some pre-bed Daddy and Son, heat pump on low
I ask my kid if he’s been good and on his school sticker chart 50 stars glow

He tells me (fully immunised, bright eyes, teeth gleaming with fluoride)
that the bad kid (the one that fidgets and squints, itchy arse, sharp teeth like pins)
has only one star sticker on his chart.

Which kid, son? The half halfcaste / half-trash white?
Purple bruised eyes? That kid baptised
with a name his mum – surely some whore – saw on a tag in Rebel Sport?

Don’t you worry bout him. That lil troublemaker exhausted his teacher, got moved
to a small room where they keep the teacher aides and brooms
Child filed under untameable, wild. Case closed.

I shake my head, pull thermal curtains over my double glazed windows, I cheer us up buying a new thousand-thread duvet set for my boy’s bed
with my American Express. I position his pillow so my kid’s head

Can sink into post-Player of the Day safe sleep. My kid says please, shares, takes turns.
I kiss his unstained face, tuck in forearms free of burns.
His belly’s ballooned with nutritious food, anus free of worms.

While somewhere in the hood the bad kid
burns his school shirt on a stove
Tryin’a make potatoes on toast while mama’s comatose, baked. He could shout about his sticker til spit wet her face
and she wouldn’t wake.

Speaking of which: Sleep, son. Let’s let CYFs handle it. The kid’ll grow up unafflicted with all that anxious anorexic safe sensitive pussyarse middleclass bullshit
Armoured in a hundred layers of scarred skin, tough, acidic as an onion.

We’ll see the kid on Police Ten Seven in no time, chin up
Wanted by some media conference cop,
second sticker finally under the wee guy’s eye, one teardrop

credits

from Loudmouth: Page and Pub Poems, released March 7, 2021

license

about

Michael Botur Whangarei, New Zealand

Michael Botur is a New Zealand poet and fiction writer of European heritage. He is author of ten books and has won a bunch of bigshot writing awards.
'Loudmouth: Page and Pub Poems' collects 15 years of spoken word verse from one of NZ's most dynamic young poets. Perfect for anyone who loves the personal mixed w the political, a little bit of hip hop and plenty of attitude.
www.nzshortstories.com ... more