Snow, Tree Forts & Alcohol

There were rock battles in the claymines.

Shingle tile fights in the tree forts.

Crabapple wars in the backyards.



The one kid with a ridiculous last name

that was a foodstuff that doubled as yet

another slang word for penis killed his

girlfriend while the rest of us were

sort of thinking about college.



The one brother of the guy who put his

cousin's eye out with a whipped roof

shingle that had a couple rusty nails

in it killed a friend in a bar fight.



The fellow up the street who

looked like a young

Michael Stipe or Gene Wilder -

big puffs of cottony hair swarming

his slender face - and was involved in

high school theater one year ahead of me

held out until he was an adult to kill his wife

and leave her body out in some far flung field

in order to be with a bar maid or waitress.



The skinny blonde who always had A's

and liked to pick something out of his

eyebrows and eat it all the time, reacted

to the deaths in Bhopal by saying "Those

people lived in tents. How dare they ask

for so much cash for damages?"



And I keep thinking of my parents

hounding me, saying "Why don't you go

out and play football with those boys?"