The Perfect Little Town

The perfect family in the perfect town
Multi-generational farmers, workers and churchgoers
A gleaming white statue of iconic Norman Rockwell beauty
Milk them cows, bail that hay, build them roads
Hit that ball, tell them jokes, slap your knees
Recite the prayers, sing them hymns, "fellowship" is God's plan.

The farming life has come to its logical economic end
Kids become teens, they smoke their dope, they vandalize as teens do
Ball games lead to sex, drugs, rock and roll
Parents cling to their ideals and traditions
Work, sport, church, jokes, Rockwell
Someone must give in to the other side or failure is assured.

This village cannot raise these children
Only the parents can do that, dodge though they might
Responsibility for the relationships is theirs and theirs alone
No values, no God, no ideals, no Rockwell paintings will suffice
The parents can roll up their sleeves, look their babies in the eye
They can listen and speak, empathize and share their souls
Or they can fail

They can escape this place created for them by unseen generations
Retire in comfort, in another perfect small town
Full of the shared values and images that brought them to this place
Comforted by the church, fellowship and the bullshit Rockwell wrought.

Their children can escape as well
To their own place of perfected ideals, values and fellowship
But there is no escaping the perfect truth
That the person to person connections are dead, never able to rise
Crushed before they could begin
By the perfect ideals, perfect values and perfect pictures
In the perfect little town.