The hunter child
Born out of fear

Shed of its skin
Along a feral frontier

Hold the low note
And feel the sting

To feast upon our hearts
Is the primal thing

A furious 'thud-thud, thud-thud' hammers my bones
as I whip shirt sleeves and scarves across my room
and into the small latch-lock box.
The one with the brown leather handle that smells
like things-so-old-they've-turned-to-air.
Long ago I lost the key but the shape of its missingness
is the most familiar thing left in this place.
Latch-key box latch-key house latch-key life.



My footsteps ricochet off the walls to the toc-toc of the witching hour.
I hail a cab and lament the bouncy back seat and pop tunes of the humming driver,
pay with an app so I don’t have to say goodbye.
Not to cab, not to town, not to room.
The high-pitched wails of the most popular human carting system
grates my melancholy between the tracks.
Claustrophobic, crammed into more boxes
I.
Hate!
Boxes.

I…
Can’t remember how I got here from there.
I sit at the airport waiting for a canceled seat so I can get the next flight to:

Anywhere, Extra Cheap.
I look at a clock and I shouldn’t have.

Footsteps haunting, tracks grating, bumping, wailing, mouth humming slow to a blur.
The family next to me carefully removing themselves from the smell of my suitcase.

“Latch-key box latch-key house latch-key life,” I tell them.

Spring sneaks by the door to the ghetto.
That's okay, they can't afford the seed.
Trees take too much room from the rentals.
No one saw the end of ghetto weeds.

Ghetto weeds once grew up sudden.
They took the food of those in bloom.
Ghetto weeds we're awful sorry,
But we haven't got the room.

Yesterday a man sold his garden
Bragging how he made such a deal.
Bought himself a high-rise apartment.
Who can tell the fruit by the peel?

Ghetto weeds once grew up sudden.
They took the food of those in bloom.
Ghetto weeds we're awful sorry,
But we haven't got the room.

What about the children of the ghetto,
Do they have the playgrounds they need?
Have you seen the children how they're growing?
Don't they shoot up just like a ****?

Ghetto weeds once grew up sudden.
They took the food of those in bloom.
Ghetto weeds we're awful sorry,
But we haven't got the room.

Running with my pals
No thought of going home.
Anything is better than
Being there all alone.
Nobody cares back there
But with friends I’m someone.
We laugh and talk together
Nobody ranks on anyone.

We get a little bit drunk
Or ****** when we can
But mostly we just visit
And look out for the man.
The cops like to hassle us
Because we look like kids.
Not because of what we are
Or from something bad we did.

We sit around empty houses
Where people moved away
And party in growing numbers
Some have guitars to play.
We sing songs we all know
And some original tunes.
But if the weather is good enough
I like to walk under the moon.

The street can be a scary place
Or it can be an amusement park
If you are careful about things
And not afraid of the dark.
And, of course, when I go home
They never notice I was gone.
It won’t be too much longer
And I’ll be permanently moving on.