Jericho, at fourteen
Lifts heavy the light snuggie around his arms
Forgets some of the women standoffish with his numbness
Beaten into a craggy duff box

As an old man
Set free every morning in the dream door, sleep as empty and  numb
Drowning in light
Out and up from the heights
To the glittering spires of an exalted city

    To a raging wildfire slowly snuffing itself out around the edges

    Then, a young man learning the back of his head and what people called him

His death then was a shiny new pane of dark frosted plastic
    His nights then much organized plastic
    Dull as dirt 'neath the evening moon
    Each star hungry for sun to give it brilliance, something for us all to forget
     His thick toes gun for a thousand

None
Carving his face in the dirt with water
None
Stalling for a long time while away from him
None
Scribbling content hieroglyphics to forget her lying eyes
None
Descending ever deeper, reaching for the nets
That are hopelessly out of her reach

He rubs his fingers along the smooth surface of the tumbler once a year
   Against hope and hoping against a chance to ignore her face
   And he won't eat anymore from the split pig
   And stay in the oxygen town and stay awake for weeks at a time
   As if the hoot owl didn't have enough songs to sing.

Fish is the worlds problem
Fins and gills a and poisonous jelly
Resting in the crevices of their more vulnerable kiddy-make-cry
To slice at young flesh is exquisite
Knowing the scar you're leaving behind
Will vanish within hours
Yet
Will remain fire-hot and ******
For the rest if the kid's fish-hating life
It's a small pond they took you to
The deepest water beneath a lunky wood and metal bridge
E
Which creaked and groaned begging to give in
We say on that bridge, poisoned legs hanging and dangling
Looking at Aunt Terry coming up out of the water much too quickly
Gravity deciding it wasn't through yet with her swimming suit top
We laughed from emberassment
But even the rowdiest among us clammed up
Breathing harder and deeper than they had ever done before
On the cusp of puberty every single *****, heretofore shrunken and shriveled from the unfortunately cold water in that unnamed pond
Every flaccid, dripping **** , when the brain sent down the message concerning the incredible size and girth of Aunt Terry's ****
Ever little immature Ramma Lamma Ding **** got a fresh infusion of prime hemoglobin straight to the juju
All we knew to do was hide in bushes
Pretend we're taking a **** while in reality we were expending the last couple of minutes it took to coax out that tiny gelatinous goop.
We spit it out of our manhood, unconcerned with where it may have
Eventually fallen. It had lost it's novelty long before we hacked it

Terry was embarrassed, to be sure
She knew what the boys were doing
It didn't bother her at all
There was a time when they fought for it. As if were spoils of war
That delusion didn't last for very long

What could she do? Her swim shirt was ruined. She had to get out
They jerred her as she found her way to the door
On one side freedom, albeit bogged down worh mamy many secrets

This could be the last time anyway
Rumor around town is that the slaughterhouse bought the land and all it's water ways. They planned to use it as  a reservoir for newly killed swine within six months you would not have recognized the ole fishing hole
The hooks baited with frozen shrimp
Grown ups helping sons find minnows gone, ahh, long gone, like the best years of our lives
We stood up as one in order to survey
The carnage, carnage even at this early stage wasa harbinger of bad omens to come
In every inch of the pond, diluting it if possible,
Pig's blood swine blood
The rats that ran with the pigs
As if they too had been specifically sent to insure that enough blood was let into the swamp
Dead swine, harder than a hobby horse, eyes still open, hopin' there's been some mistake
A lack of regulations combined with forced apathy kept us from caring
Much about what e believed was an injustice . We were children. It was enough hell to see the clean waters replaced by pig blood, pig guts. offal, intestines and other items that remain inside the body for a very good reason

May you find streams and brooks
Lakes and. Oceans
Of baptizing water
May you remember with great fondness your toes playing in the sand
Remember, my children, how crystal clear and pristine were the waters
Good, well tended salt water for catfish
Not a pool full of crimson stench.
This is my childhood. Shouldn't someone have let me know a long time ago that you were planning on turning it into the slaughtered pig open grave
It can't be
It just can't be

(And yet, it is)