The boy who hangs his story from the bridge.
As if by fairy tale told minutely to a desperate lover.
Her tormented eyes
picturing this broken neck;
his story told in the lingering art of death.  Or

he who faces the train to Ferny Hills
and each commuter who remembers
that day’s monotony as bits of him
slapped against a carriage like
someone throwing wet fish.  Or

the pass-over traffic
grumbling at the fall of tragic demonstration - a
boy not welcomed anywhere except by the earth
that took him in with a kiss of bitumen.  Or

balanced on needle point, a
thousand thousand weights pressing death
into an arm embracing the TV-cable guide and
a torn photograph of Jennifer the mud wrestler.
And all this waste
sending little statistic waves of shock that don't anymore.

Gone to sleep like the boys who left us.
Early sleep. Early rise and forget the
sons who disappear in a magician’s finale.
The cloak of social history that accepts this.
The magic
abracadabra of disturbed unhappy youth.