Being the only one awake in the back seat, or the only one thinking loudly,
and in the back of  your mind, sitting there like living weight, you've got
the giant Citgo sign
(you swear you could fit in the T),
listening to passion pit as the golden sun flings itself on the highway,
a construction worker lowering his pants in front of a dumpster,
hearing the sandlot play downstairs as you stare at the dark ceiling,
pizza you ate in the park the evening before now being had for breakfast,
finding out the **** is pro-choice,
getting your shoulder squeezed on a rollercoaster
by a boy who screams like a girl,         
feeling drunk even though you're sober,
running through the dark,
passing trailers with round lanterns lining the tops,
outlining shirtless men and smoking women,
looking in the mirror after swimming with your clothes on
in a hot tub,
and you're not sure if you're
beautiful
or
disgusting.
Yeah, you can sleep now.

Blue Hill Avenue

It begins with Spanglish-speaking merchants
conducting business inside of bulletproof stalls,
where the faint scent of dried cod follows you
to the flat fix next door, into the auto body,
a hair shop, and to the steps of a church
for first generation Cape Verdean-Americans,
their offspring and that old lady --
someone’s  grandmother --
who wears a black dress on Fridays
and walks home from the Market Basket
the same time that you get off the bus
who wears a shopping bag full of tropical foods
and memories on her head.

And if you stand at its first **** south,
you will notice how the families disappear
in the African American section.
There are fewer stores here, lots of energy boxes
with epitaphs: “Tiffany Moore Died Here”;
a seatless swing set, a playground gone fallow.
You won’t see any church steeples in this section
that feeds on a neon CITGO sign too small
to illuminate the skyline like the mega one in Copley does.

A few blocks away, a ghost of the Jewish past sits
with pointy stars of David nestled inside its
bulbous steeples that simmer on summer Sundays
where Haitian congregants stew inside,
praying and giving to the building fund
in damp envelopes that will go to the omnipotent one
who will someday replace the stars with crosses.

And as you keep walking, past the temple,
you enter Grove Hall’s Mecca, a strip mall
with a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts,

a Stop & Shop, CVS, Bank of America,
and a Rainbows that sells your teenaged aunt
the sequined one-off shirt she needs for a date
and the fishnets she wears to the carnival
that parades through a sliver of the avenue,
the very next section of our beloved Blue Hill.

Across the street, Check Cashers speak English
as good as the number of dollars and cents
they count when they hand you back your cashed check
or the double win you scratched out of a Gold Rush ticket.

Adjacent to them, a Greek-owned sandwich shop
that feeds you steak bombs as long as your forearm or
Festive Fridays: 20 wing dings, a pound of fries,
a Greek salad, and a gracious gulp of fountain cola --
essentially, a heart-attack meal.  

Next, another ghost of the Jewish past,
a church in the former Franklin Park Theater,
where Yiddish entertainers performed vaudeville acts
which nobody living can remember.

Then a building that resembles an African footstool,
one that will allow you to see over the **** of the hill
and down below at a gospel choir trapped in everlasting song
against the wall of the one-hour cleaners and that store
where a turkey-shaped lady with flour dusted hands
stands behind a window, noticing you,
while guarding her beef patties and cocoa bread
with a bulletproof smile.

pancakes started my rugged day,
I quit hittin' the hay,
roughly around 10am.

I refused High Focus,
and wondered why
the medication the
prescribed was so
blah.

I know why,
but we keep these
things to ourselves.

Once I took my headphones
out, I began to hear
the blasphemy
around me.

The man at the library,
talking business,
taking business.
Telecon, christmas shopping,
Mr. Walker dead too
young.

And as I sit in these
seats once again,
the same I sat in when
the SAT's were the only
importance to me,
I wonder where I was.

So I took off on
Mama's crossroads
road bicycle.
It felt good,
gosh it felt great.

One stop on the narrow's
at a waterfall to fly back to
a blackout and memory lane.

Over the Delaware,
away from NJ,
take me to PA.

One stop at the homestead
for a buck-fifty coffee
fix and a few chapters
from On the Road.
Thanks, Jack.
I needed those laughs.

So I carry on,
on the toe-path
along the canal.
Some circles
and squares to remind
me of hopscotch,
or maybe a sign.

A light up of an American
Spirit, and I can never
seem to escape everyone
when I'm on the run.

Passer-by's,
a woman and her Labradors,
a handsome man with shades,
a blonde, gelled, comb-over,
and a cell phone to the ear in one
hand.
oh, and ME, the smoker
on the cycle.

I know I said those packs
were my last, but really,
I've hit rock bottom,
a broke rock bottom,
and this pack is
surely my last.

So I made it over the
Delaware, searching for
a treasure hunt.
The Frenchtown Market,
was beat, so I peddled
on Rt.12 and made it
to Chris's Citgo-
if you care to know.

Made it to the center
of great-gasoline
smells, and found my
treasure hunt.
In fact, the generous man
gave me two.

Pedal to the metal,
click-clack the sound of
metal banging from
something, hitting
something, on a bike
I can't call my own.

I continue on Rt.12
and pass by the dead
deer, a water break,
here and there.
Hot sweat, cold sweat,
de-layer, zipper up.

The fake flowers,
a compliment,
a pretty hint,
that some one maybe
loves me.
And I keep my eyes
fixated on what is
in front of me-
a car passes,
I LOVE YOU
writes the handwriting
on a white vehicle.

So, pedal to the metal,
I carry on towards
the library,
to a place I feel
safest.

No intentions of even
renting a thing-
except maybe ******.
However, finish what I start,
can't seem to do that so
easily these days.
Ohh, but I'd like to.

That's a start.
A quick stop,
for a quick slice,
and the time to skim the
Treasure Hunt.

Oh  a beautiful day,
I made it from start
to finish.
I'm sorry I can't
seem to do as you say,
and the options,
and choices,
they really do slay.

Dye my hair black and drench my lips in venom red.

Snag a ticket at the bus station in town and watch the country fade away in a blur

Slither off the bus with clasped fingers around one suitcase with both hands reaching towards the gray skies, trying to tickle the glowing Citgo sign

My oxfords slapping the cobblestone as I run down the alley, blades of hair slapping my face with each stride.

I scream only once while running, I scream for freedom

I scream for Boston

a child is being
detained,
along with his
mother,
at a
citgo
quick stop
by an Asian
store owner
suspected
of stealing a
candybar.
f

After forty years the brownstones
still seemed the same except
for the newer cars and the people
in fashionable clothes walking
golden dogs in chic comfort vests,
all living in houses he couldn’t afford.

He couldn’t believe he grew up here
when the streets were lively
with black live matter
and Gerald every summer
out there  with his roller
painting fatsfix’s store front red.

Now there sits Wray’s fancy drink café,
his name in a stylish white font
outcropping from a charcoal awning,
a cocktail glass replacing the Y, a large
BLACKLIVESMATTER banner out front,
proudly put there by its white owner.

The old El Diamantet is now
Castro’s Authentic Mexican Cuisine  
sharing space with a Dunkin’ Donuts
with expensive bicycles racked
to the declining handicap ramp.
The Mobil on Fuller- a Citgo Market.

The Meats and Greens turned Bamboo’s
and the farmacia now just  a pharmacy,
and the biggest insult of them all,
New Murken’s Restaurant which
served the best corn-beef sandwhiches
is an “eat big, leave happy” Mega  Bites.

The homebuds  had split, vanished
to memories of stinging high fives,
basketball jams and feeling up
Zoe on a fine Friday night,  the smell
of her  lingering in forty years  of regret.
There’ll be no bros coming from  these doors.

His heart  felt the sting of going home to a home
that was no longer his and no longer wanted him.
That past was a meat offering to this new block-
as if his blood and flesh had been scrubbed away
in the white wash of neatly trimmed roses behind
spiked  fences-  as if that there of his never happened.

“What was here before we came?” he imagined
the children asking the parents behind the doors.
“Nothing of note,” they would reply using the
same line the real estate agent routinely recited
to anyone who inquired about what existed
before the abattoir came and moved  on.

I felt your queer-bait wrest 'round my prong-horn, in the barn 1 year
ago, when Venezuela owned the wonderful gas-station called Citgo