Let me tell you a story <br />Filled with blood guts and glory <br />Death, old age and prejudice <br />No boundaries to pain’s edifice <br />At war he was a hero <br />At home he was a zero <br />Has a heart of stone <br />But now he lives alone <br />With a six pack on his hip <br />His heart bleeding like a slow drip <br />He didn’t bother <br />To learn to be a father <br />Old school all the way <br /> A 72 Gran Torino on display <br />He lived to work <br />Never anybody’s jerk <br />Retired from 30 years in an auto plant <br />Hoping for some serenity and no one to enchant <br />But slowly the world has passed him by <br />More black, more brown, more slant eye <br />Still he knows right from wrong <br />It’s the same here as in Hong Kong <br />When coward gangs seek power and control <br />He lets them know they are digging themselves a hole <br />The weak and defenseless look on with a tired eye <br />Let themselves become victims of a drive by <br />But their message is misspent <br />To a man who never tried to repent <br />In the night he had a plan <br />Not a knife or gun in his hand <br />He would defeat his enemy with his brain <br />Making them believe he was insane <br />To attempt to take on the entire gang <br />Yet they listened to his brave harangue <br />So he reached into his jacket for a lighter <br />They reacted like any street fighter <br />Opened fire to stop this threat <br />As if they were repaying society’s debt <br />But in the end it would be they who would fail <br />As each and everyone was hauled off to jail <br />So if we listen closely to the church bell as it rings <br />We can hear his eulogy, “I finish things”.<br /><br />Alfred Ramos<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/gran-torino/
