and the eraser, so I can
clean up messes with a bit
of magic rubber

this **** ink is indelible,
even if it's scrolled on a page
in ephemeral cyberspace

delete doesn't count once other
eyes have made a meal of your meaning,
digested and crapped out your words

I long for a Big Chief tablet
and the art gum magic I could perform
with nimble fingers and clear eyes

he sits on the curb
all twelve years of him,
waiting to be a teen

when he'll have to pay
adult price for a movie ticket
or bus pass

he usually has no cash
for either; but wishing and waiting
are art forms to him

he's learned to move
the brush of time slowly on life's palette
while he watches others whizzing by

on their store-bought skateboards
and Huffy ten speed bikes, while he has
only one gear for two feet

which now are clad in Keds
from the thrift store, and planted
firmly on the cement

by the drain gutter,  where he
last saw his favorite possession, a Super Ball,
get ****** into the sewer

when the storm ended, he yanked
off the manhole cover and crawled into
the dark, but the ball was gone forever

when he came back into the street,
yet lamenting his round loss, more boys
on bikes buzzed by

their circles safely spinning
on asphalt, far from the gutter and curb where
he once again sat--wishing, waiting

Baltimore, 1965

before the fireflies
made an appearance

about the time cicadas
began their buzz

when the men were lighting
after dinner ****

and moms clanging dishes,
a noisy resentment

I was on the street, with brothers
named Harry and Johnny

playing baseball, mostly
missing our catches

it had not registered in our grade school heads
dusk was not good light for hardball

nor had we learned what it was like
to see anything die

save the bees we suffocated in jars
(forgive us our sins, Father),

though that night, the last day of school,
the stars were all aligned

IF the creator wanted us to see
mangled mortality:

he came around the corner of
Vandenburg and Vine

in his graduation gift--a hot new Chrysler,
all chrome and crank

the telephone pole he hit didn't see him, or
complain--it remained straight, tall

when the driver went through the windshield
and his skull introduced itself to wood and pitch

my dad was the first to come through
the door, though other fathers followed

I recall colors, though muted
by the fading light

red, red, pink, even white and gray and blond--his hair,
flattop still in place

well, it was on the half head I saw
from across the street

where Harry, Johnny and I were conscripted
to stand

my mother brought a yellow towel,
to stop bleeding I thought I heard

but my father never used it, telling her
instead to bring the green army blanket

which he draped over the boy's body the very second
before we saw the ambulance lights

by then, the fireflies were beginning
their dance

we were told to go inside, to hide our
eyes from the body on a stretcher

the slamming of the ambulance doors,
which I watched through our window

while my father used Lava soap to wash his hands;
then my mother pulled the drapes

blocking from view the pole, the crushed car,
and the glow of fireflies drifting above it all

he moves the pace of the river,
his home a houseboat

he eschews dry land, for that is where
they are all buried:

a wife, his only son, the anonymous victims
of his rifle's rabid rattle

whatever ghostly litany lives in the lapping of waves
against his hull remains mystery to him

on the water he'll stay, drifting downstream
until he reaches the sea

where he hopes he'll have no memory
of hard earth and tormenting souls

he poured the remaining Cheerios
into the bowl, then covered them with milk
he need not sniff to know was old,
stale, curdling

still he ate, for he knew without
this sour meal, he would tire on his
mile journey to the bus stop, and
not concentrate in school

his red brick haven, where there
was always running water, porcelain
toilets, adults who didn't reek of
of moonshine, **** and smoke

there he could read under electric
lights, watch movies about the moon
and strange rockets that would one day
blast a man all the way there

another cleaner world he imagined:
a sterile, silent white orb, pocked by boulders
bigger than mountains, craters with names
like Mare Serenitatis, a sea of serenity

that is where he wanted to be
on the dark side of the moon, where
grave gravity looses its reins a bit, hidden
from earth's billions of eyes

and when he dared reveal this
wish in the ears of his elders, they
would whisper among themselves,
saying he was an old soul

but barely double digits, he knew
this could not be so--for his body was only
tired from toil, and as far as his soul,
he knew it had no age, not in years

not here on this wretched third stone
from the sun, nor in a crater as old as time
waiting for him to escape the bounds of earth,
and the bitter milk of morning

Bell County, Kentucky, 1964

My thoughts are coalescing in a web of frustration,
I linger on the walls that are as blank as my memories
of a happier time. I write in tipp-ex, white washing the
words wrote in red pen that bled from my finger-tips.

Syllables verse so much when adhering with word and
reflections of who we  are. But mine are shallow puddles
of nothingness that are only filled with tears,
consolidating my hollowness crumbling within my tears.

Collect the words like breadcrumbs, they weren't fresh but slightly
past a sell by date of needed listening. I've died inside so many
times to be resurrected each morning devours me a little bit more,
the pills fall like raindrops in the puddle of my mind.