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I used to be a
mortar forker
when I was a kid
working construction,
packing tongs of brick
and slinging cinder blocks
up three levels of scaffold
only to have the block layers
complain about how the mud
was as dry as a camels ****...
but the pay was good
and it was drank up every weekend
while the chicks admired my
tanned and buff skinny frame
but shunned my drunken advances.


© 2013
The giant moon lit up the night.
The early June air cool and crisp.
We drove my mother's car through the woods
Up Forker road to the place she was staying.
The Eagles serenaded us through the static of the radio and
We kissed for the first time, bathed in moonlight.
Her smell, exotic and unknown and wonderful.

The giant moon lit up the night.
The early June air moist and perfect.
Cars raced across the downtown bridge overhead.
The night wind and the sounds of the city, our soundtrack.
Graduation was over and we left our friends behind.
Graduation was over and our tongues were intertwined.
I'd never been touched there before, and have never felt like that since.

The giant moon lit up the night.
The mid-August air warm and still.
We parked my beat-up old Ford truck in the middle of God knows where.
She thought she was going to look at the glimmer of stars,
She found a diamond in her sleeping bag instead.
We cried together in hope and excitement.
Her warmth next to me could have sustained me forever.

The giant moon lights up the night.
The early June air cool and restless.
I drive the same beat-up old Ford through the same corners and the same woods
Up Forker Road, thinking about them all.
Not about all of the things that would eventually go wrong
Or the nights when my very soul would ache like no other pain in life,
But of the nights when that same summer moonlight
Poured mercy out on our hearts;
In those moments, life was new and sublime.

The nights not like this one, when the moonlight guides me home to emptiness
And that curious mixture of longing and trepidation
That pours out from a freshly broken heart
And a giant summer moon.

— The End —