once when i was a nobody, teenager
didn’t count. grown-ups ruled the race
no matter how much sense, how many
teeth had been swallowed from fights
with the IRS trying to bite the hand
that took food from their mouths.

this is why teenagers didn’t count;
we couldn’t count things that mattered,
only how many pimples were new,
how many frays in these hand-me-down levis,
how many times all us boys kissed karen
in our walking sleepy dreams of love.

still, poor and all, i was headed forward
to my destiny that had no hands to shake,
no happy face to receive my wanting smile.
only sneers, snides and an elusive gait
that seemed to outdistance me like an eland
ridding the slow lioness of her evening meal.

when i did get tall enough to see over the fence
they were gone, my future, my mama at home,
daddy riding the ribbons of highways across
the less-than-great nation who didn’t take
it’s poor, it’s young or feeble anywhere
but to their cardboard propped-up dreams.

02/01/2007

Posted on 02/01/2007
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