When I was fifteen years old
I was a pacifist and I knew everything

a boy I knew from school
caught my ear with a right cross

hey ****** he said
it was all he said

it hit me as we were walking
to the baseball diamond half past four

it spun me around
and I recognized him from class

quiet panic froze my feet
facing him in stunned confusion

a ringing bounced through my skull
my chest tightened my eyes wide

I felt another before it fell
as wordlessly he swung his hand again

this time it hit my stomach
my bottom rib to the left

I tried to stop his hands again again
but it never works like the movies

and it hurt
when ringing in my right ear cut out

this I didn't know
I thought I knew everything

it hurt
when he hit my nose

there was immediately blood
on my good blue sweater

it was muffled frenzied silence
I wanted him to say something

say something say anything
tell me why you're hurting me

tears burned in my eyes
but he couldn't see them

maybe he would have stopped
but they were easily missed in the red

on the ground now I covered my face
stop it I finally said please I said

if he heard me
he made no mention of it

and then there was fire in my side
his foot pulled back again

I turned away from the hurting
then fire in my back above my hip

then nothing
footsteps toward my eyes shut tight

another kick and I heard it coming
and I was ready for it to hit my face

but instead a barrage of little rocks
the gravel I lay in now in my hair

then the footsteps left
silent as they arrived

I lay there three or four eternities
aching and still so so confused

I didn't go to baseball
I hid under bleachers in the other field

man up my dad said that evening
as I wept in the passenger seat

I was a pacifist and I knew nothing
and it hurt.

In the flashes of passing streetlights
I carved out sentence after sentence

the endless noise of the slipping road
flickering into the highway I knew
was beneath my feet but I couldn't see

I was a child searching for solace
looking for a new imaginary friend.

Just out of curiosity,
what was it that
killed the cat?

We used to dream
in my father's old car

a dusty 1974 Camaro
red as a candy apple

we talked about driving to Chicago
with stratocasters in the back seat

but we each escaped the town alone
and the car never left the garage.

I'm not sure I'll ever have a home
in the way I imagined I would

maple trees and softball games
silverware and a chess board
and a leather chair that remembers me

I will always be an unsteady train
on tracks that diverge and separate
where will I work and where will I go
I will forever ask out the window

today the ground is too concrete for roots
only money buys you soil
and that too will **** you
slowly, slowly.

Always a writer
always running
out of things to say.

Sometimes I'll
come to you in pain
but I won't know
how to tell you
where it hurts.