"oh look,
Right over there.
The footprint from your sneakers,
Has left a mark,
Can you see?
Just...there?
Yeah, right on the shattered pieces of my heart"

I found it while unpacking boxes of old books in the basement.
It slipped out of a Spanish to English
dictionary that I probably smuggled out
of a middle school library ten years ago
and haven't opened since.

I knew what it was, of course-
whole years were spent with bad posture
listening to substitute teachers and CCD carpool-drivers
lecture about the bold beauty and senseless frailty
that was youth.
Their bodies were at once tense and earnest.
Their voices were at once condescending and pleading as
they sang deeply of the space we blindly occupied and
they fiercely missed.

My understanding of youth was a
sepia-streak stumble through tall reeds below an open
sky; taking clumsy steps on sea-cut feet
and one day regretting not passing enough
notes kept folded in pockets or taking
enough pictures of the faces whom I ran beside.

Youth, obviously, is subjective-
It can be teased up or sculpted-in tight
in relation to circumstance.
In my own mind youth is a cool breeze,  glory days thing- like prom night or my first kiss.
Really each took place years ago but, since they didn’t
carry the weight or sheen I was told they should,
I still sit tight and wait for them.

They will find me eventually.
They’ll arrive a loud booming from a furious sky that births open-prairie rainfall that quiets my
teenage sadness as I sit shotgun
in some boy’s pickup and we race
a  cornfield to the Wyoming border.

The fact that I’m in my twenties is irrelevant.
The fact that I live in New England, where corn is imported and gas is expensive, is not worth noting.

So when, in the basement among the books I've hoarded and arranged around me like armor,
I saw my golden-ticket youth slip
out between pages and waft slowly down, I let it  hit the ground.
I could have crushed it with a sneakered sole
like a cigarette or crumbled it into nothing with shaking fingers.
I could have let it careen down between damp paperbacks to
the box’s bottom and know for certain it
would never reemerge.

But, surprisingly, I didn’t want to.
It was light and lovely in a way I would have never guessed.
It wasn’t as sticky as I thought it’d be.
In fact, as I flipped my hair forward and
double-no-triple knotted the bouncy, silky strings
(Strings that felt more like existing than regretting)
at the nape of my neck- a smile so severe I thought I'd crack found it's way to me.

My youth will never be something I flip through
like a catalogue and miss and cry out for. I will never
be haunted by it nor will I conjure it
around a fire while trying to make a point.
I won’t tell ghost stories about my youth
to bored kids because I am not going to let it die.

I saw it today. For the first time I could touch
it and smell it and I realized it didn’t have to be
the sarcophagus of who I was,
but instead could serve as the shifting
and stretching prologue to who I will be.

I’ll let it hang loose and light from my neck.
Its colors will fade in the sun and its beads will
probably warp as it trapezes altitudes and climates.
It will dull and tarnish.
It won’t stay pretty but neither will I.

I’ll gladly sacrifice any lace and filtered polaroid memories
and oft-repeared stories of my youth; kept behind glass and propped up among rags at a museum exhibit,
for the low belly excitement of closing my eyes today and not knowing what I'll see when I open them tomorrow.

The starters' pistol sounded once
and sneakered feet churn up the clay-
Fame and fortune they pursue
Four hundred meters ahead, gold, lay.

Muscles strain and lungs may burn
inspired by Olympic fire
Faster, Higher, Stronger, yes-
The Motto does serve to inspire.

The race is run and some excel
Others just happy they took part.
Those fastest, on the podium stand,
to hear their anthem, hand on heart.

Obama has a different dream:
He'd make those Medals Lead, Tin and Clay
If no man makes his own success
why give the precious stuff away?

Never mind the countless dawns
they rose to run in rain or heat.
The weights they lifted in the gym.
How hard they trained on blistered feet.

If no man makes his own success
and government is the source of all
Explain to me, Barrack Hussein,
How did the Soviet Union fall?

Sneakered feets skid the cheap wax floor
The screaming maddening muddled expectation of children echo unhappiness
Its a hot Saturday in retail hell
Where have a nice day meets a condecending flip off
And fake smiles still taste like caffine syrup
Over head lights flicker and bring the three o'clock head ache
Another day, five more hours
Until leaving

For a moment,
We were both here.

Some part of me knew when you arrived.
The sun burned a little hotter, the moon lingered a little closer;
Flowers seemed to point in your direction.
I could feel the wind change its course whenever you laughed.
But while you swam through clouds and crowds
I could only watch from afar as I had to push past the forces
That pulled every part of me to where you were.
But you were here. And that was enough for me.

How funny that the streets I can trace like veins in my body,
Were so new to you, strangers to your eyes.
But for that single, fleeting moment,
You walked through them, not minding the newness of scenery,
Leaving your trace with every sneakered footstep.
I hope the city held you like I would.

My language must have tasted different on your tongue.
The words were as foreign in your eyes as yours were in mine.
For the first time, I could see your fingertips piercing through the barrier,
And God knows how close I was to connecting mine with yours.

Our stories were finally synced,
Finally on the same page.
I didn't mind that I was one word in your book
And you were a whole chapter in mine,
I was just fine with being any part of your story;
Even just for a moment, even if I wouldn't be a part of it again.

Now you are there.
And I am still here.
But I look for you in every thing I see,
Wondering if you saw the same.

And then, you are here again.
But just for a moment.

I.
This is how it ends:
Two sneakered feet pounding
Staccato hearts into the blackened tar
Of the streets, yelling.
(But what are they yelling?
A name.   My name.)
And my platinum hair is up
Out of my face, so the wind kisses
My cheeks, turns them red and blue
Like me:  Red, for the number of times
He will one day turn the color of my shame
To a scalding hot 10; and blue,
The cloud that lays
Over me, when he proves my instincts right
When they told me to run.

This is how it ends
And I’m six and overhearing
My mother tell my dad to
Do a different dance on
Someone else’s blackened tar,
And now they live in a cute house
Under a cloudless sky
With my dog and seven reasons why
They never look up and see me there,
Older and darker but
Always running to the south,
Away from their winter.
This is how it ends.
But not for him.

This is how it ends:
Pictures on a feed
Spinning realities you’ll never taste
And never need
With slings and smiles and
Canned joy, selling success for a nickel
And sadness for a dollar.
It ends, and you see her
With her dyed hair and lipstick
(Red, to remind you
And red, to forget you)
And you pause – because, really,
Did you expect that you couldn’t?
And suddenly you start seeing her
Silhouette in every doorway and
Hearing her heavy steel words
Laying like anchors on your heart
Always pulling, tugging, moving towards her
And that beautiful sunny day when
She looked through you for
The last time.
(You wonder how a ghost
Could feel this heavy)





























II.*
This is how it begins:
One coffee full of
Too much cream, and laughter
Ringing too loudly
In your ears
Because of something you said.
And footsteps slapping on
Wet concrete, meeting tiny slippered
Eager feet, feeling safer now
Hugged by tiny hands
Than in his strong arms that left you
Bruised.
It begins in the quick silences
Between sentences, and meanings
Upon words, and breaths
Between kisses
Atop laps,
Atop chairs,
Atop wishes.
It begins when you listen
And you’re sitting in your car
Watching dusk paint the sky
And you can feel the groan of the earth
Beneath you, see the planet revolve itself
Into darkness, and you can’t hear her
Caustic voice and
The way she sounded when she left, and
You can’t feel his hands on you or his
Beard where it chafed your thighs – no,
That is where it ends.
And this is where you start.
(Unload the anchors from your heart.)

I can laugh now,
but for a time
I was so scared
of my shadow;
that I would only
venture forth at
night, or noon
or during an
occasional
eclipse of the sun.
You might guess
that I’d be ridiculed,
what with carrying
a parasol to school
on sunny days in spring,
but my brother was
three hundred pounds
of muscle, hung out
with the Amboy Dukes
and carried, as a
weapon, half a tree
trunk like a third arm.
From the time I was
six years old, the other
children called me sir.

My mother put an end
to it “toot sweet.”
While no student
of psychology,
she took the time to
reason with me,
as she bent over a
steaming laundry tub,
in her ragged house dress,
like something out of Dickens.
She said quite clearly,
“Go outside right now,
or I will ******* you.”
My mother never hit,
but I took my sneakered
feet down the tenement
stairs, so quickly that they
barely touched the steps,
and then bareheaded,
I braved the April sun.

Walking on the slick and slippery trail
mud was ******* at my sneakered feet;
on caliche ground and crumbling clay
more obtrusive with the morning's heat.

Dappled sunshine played its hide and seek
my quiet, smallish terrier trotted by my side;
and as we broke through the forest glade
we entered grassy meadows high and wide.

The wild, west wind, was blowing very strong
hanging, stratus clouds showed promised rain;
here, the way ran almost razor straight and true
with very little elevation and hardly any gain.

If it wasn't for the slippage and the sliding
this earthly path would be a pleasant walk;
an outing, generally agreeable and grand
without need of conversation or silly talk.

In the distance, long low clouds are crying
with tears formed, from ending winter's cold;
yet I'd not hesitate to come back here again
to but be a lonely vagabond, if truth be told.

In elementary school the kids who had  lice in their hair were sent home. During recess, you’d hear it through the small sneakered  grapevine while playing on the blacktop that “so & so go lice” –choruses of “ew” would erupt from the girls and some of the boys. In a few days the “so & sos” would return with a freshly shaved head.

As far I knew, lice were akin to fairies in their size and exclusivity. I’d never seen a louse or a fairy.
                              ...

There were many stray cats on our block.  When I was old enough to have a decent daily allowance I would save each dollar within my backpack’s side zipper bag until it had enough money to buy cat food in bulk.

I would get home three hours before my mom and pops, so I’d take my sweet time feeding the stray cats in the backyard. I got so confident that my parents would never catch me doing the deed that I bought two large silver cat bowls.
                            ...
My parents never caught me feeding the five stray cats. However, they did catch all the lice the cats left in the back yard.

I remember my mom running into the house screaming “ ¡hay pulgas!”

                              ...
On a Saturday, my parents made me help them spray the entire backyard. To teach me a lesson they said.
                                 ...
They were tiny and fast; they had that “now you see me, now you don’t” kind of speed. I wanted to catch them, but every time I tried I failed. Until I swatted at my arm, and squished one through pure luck did I know what a louse looked like.